Brief aphasia evaluation (minimum verbal performance): Concurrent and conceptual validity study in patients with unilateral cerebral lesions

Abstract

This test of free distribution demonstrated a satisfactory validity.

Relación entre el informe del cuidador sobre el habla espontánea del paciente y la Evaluación Breve de la Afasia

“…None of the patients had any associated neurological disease (prior or simultaneous). The patients who were excluded were those who suffered from visual agnosia, who were unable to identify objects or cards, or who did not have a minimal and clear comprehension and expression of affirmative and negative responses, whether verbal or nonverbal (7,10) .…”

“…Although it is necessary (and methodologically correct) to verify the properties of both approaches, only the second approach has been more widely spread. Nevertheless, there are some studies which verify the relevance of the first approach, with good results (6)(7)(8)(9)(10) . The premise guiding the first approach would be: if simple measures with very few items per function can prove validity as representatives of more extensive functions, it increases the probability of constructing multivariate or multifunctional instruments (also characterized for their efficiency) composed of a variety of these simpler measures.…”

“…If they are not embodied in exhaustive operational definitions, they can make interpretation so difficult that, finally, the diagnosis ends up being intuitive, according to ordinal scales. This difficulty is seen even in well-known batteries, used as criterion for validation of other scales (7,11) .…”

“…Taking into account that spontaneous speech is usually classified globally or intuitively due to the large number of indicators that are frequently involved (7,11) , in this study it was decided to evaluate specifically the overall perception of the caregiver on the patient's spontaneous speech. This was done considering that the use of a single item may allow more possibilities than the evaluation of multiple items, in terms of measurement control.…”

“…Following such model, this study intends to analyze the relevance or concurrent validity of a single item of the caregiver's interview, consisting of four questions and four final categories of evaluation referred to the verbal function of the patient, through its relationship with multiple reliable and valid measurements of aphasia. These measurements were represented by the Brief Aphasia Evaluation (BAE) (6,7,10) .…”