Concurrent Validity and Reliability of the Core Lexicon Measure as a Measure of Word Retrieval Ability in Aphasia Narratives

Abstract

Purpose General agreement exists in the literature that clinicians struggle with quantifying discourse-level performance in clinical settings. Core lexicon analysis has gained recent attention as an alternative tool that may address difficulties that clinicians face. Although previous studies have demonstrated that core lexicon measures are an efficient means of assessing discourse in persons with aphasia (PWAs), the psychometric properties of core lexicon measures have yet to be investigated. The purpose of this study was (a) to examine the concurrent validity by using microlinguistic and macrolinguistic measures and (b) to demonstrate interrater reliability without transcription by raters with minimal training. Method Eleven language samples collected from PWAs were used in this study. Concurrent validity was assessed by correlating performance on the core lexicon measure with microlinguistic and macrolinguistic measures. For interrater reliability, 4 raters used the core lexicon checklists to score audio-recorded discourse samples from 10 PWAs. Results The core lexicon measures significantly correlated with microlinguistic and macrolinguistic measures. Acceptable interrater reliability was obtained among the 4 raters. Conclusions Core lexicon analysis is potentially useful for measuring word retrieval impairments at the discourse level. It may also be a feasible solution because it reduces the amount of preparatory work for discourse assessment.

Development of a measure of function word use in narrative discourse: core lexicon analysis in aphasia

“…2020, Dalton and Richardson 2015, Kim et al . 2019, Kim and Wright 2020a, 2020b, MacWhinney et al . 2010).…”

A Compendium of Core Lexicon Checklists

“…9 Additionally, the validity and reliability of all CoreLex checklists developed by Kim and colleagues were examined for the 11 PWAs. 14 In this study, correlations between two macrolinguistic measures (coherence, thematic units), three microlinguistic measures (information units, syntactic complexity, lexical diversity), and CoreLex scores were computed. Significant correlations between each word type checklist and some measures were observed; however, which measures were correlated, and the strength and direction of correlations varied depending on the CoreLex word type and task.…”

“…4 See Appendix D for CoreLex checklists for Good Dog Carl and Picnic stimuli as reported by Kim and colleagues. 9,14…”

“…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.…”

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

“…In a recent study of core lexicon measures with 11 PWA, Kim and Wright have yielded encouraging data related to concurrent validity and inter-rater reliability of their core lexicon measures by story task (GDC, Picnic). 55 Though the core lexicon measure was designed to provide information about the typicality of language use, it conceptually can be considered to index microlinguistic levels of language ability. Based on the examination by Dalton and Richardson, 54 the researchers hypothesized that performance on core lexicon and macrolinguistic measures would significantly correlate.…”