A Tutorial on Core Lexicon: Development, Use, and Application

Abstract

Evidence suggests that discourse-level assessment in aphasia should be implemented within clinical settings. However, existing discourse measures that are time and labor intensive in process prevent speech-language pathologists from applying such measures to their clinical practices. This article provides an overview of a lexicon-based analysis (core lexicon measure) that recently was developed and investigated for clinical usability. A new approach to core lexicon measures provides a simple scoring method with short instructions, which may be practical and time efficient for assessment and management of persons with aphasia. The article concludes with suggestions for clinical application and implementation.

A Compendium of Core Lexicon Checklists

“…5,[7][8][9][10][11][12] Critical for consideration of wider utilization, CoreLex may also be related to other discourse measures that are highly informative but less user-friendly due to the greater time required to complete them, as demonstrated by Dalton and Richardson. 8 Combined with other articles in this issue by Kim and Wright 4 and Dalton et al, 12 readers have access to detailed information about checklist development, potential application of checklists (including extensions to CoreLex efficiency), and the checklists themselves. It is our hope that clinicians and researchers will be able to utilize these measures as appropriate in their practice, with the ultimate goal of increasing the use of meaningful discourse analyses and treatments for persons with aphasia.…”

“…Further details are available in the article by Kim and Wright. 4 See Appendix D for CoreLex checklists for Good Dog Carl and Picnic stimuli as reported by Kim and colleagues. 9,14…”

“…For a detailed discussion of the development of CoreLex measures, please see the article by Kim and Wright. 4 Indeed, research examining CoreLex indicates that PWAs produce fewer typical lexical items than controls. [5][6][7][8] CoreLex has demonstrated sensitivity to age-related differences in neurologically healthy individuals, 9 between healthy individuals and PWAs, and between aphasia subtypes.…”

“…9 Detailed elicitation instructions for these tasks are available in the article by Kim and Wright. 4 Unfortunately, these checklists are dispersed throughout the literature 5,8,9,14 or only available as conference proceedings. 6,7,15 Furthermore, CoreLex checklists have been developed by different groups and for different purposes, which means that the results of each checklist may need to be interpreted differently and/or different checklists should be used for different purposes.…”

Using AphasiaBank for Discourse Assessment

“…In fact, this issue features several articles on the use of core lexicons and their application to aphasia, extending the scope of earlier work that examined the top 10 nouns and verbs in participants' responses to the procedural discourse and Cinderella story telling tasks from the AphasiaBank discourse protocol (see articles by Dalton et al and Kim et al in this issue). [23][24][25][26][27] Dalton and Richardson analyzed responses to the Broken Window picture description task from the AphasiaBank discourse protocol. 7 They created a core lexicon (CoreLex) list of the 24 unique lemmas (word roots, such as "run" for "runs," "running" and "ran") used by at least 50% of the normative sample (92 control participants).…”