Receptive aphasia in elderly stroke patients as assessed by the Token test

Abstract

Receptive aphasia was diagnosed in elderly stroke patients by a shortened version of the Token test. 75 per cent of patients with left hemisphere lesions and aphasia had an abnormal test. Patients with right hemisphere lesions scored poorly early post-stroke. Item analysis showed a qualitative identity for patients with left hemisphere lesions and aphasia and for patients with right hemisphere lesions suggesting that even the last-mentioned group may present with receptive aphasia although milder early post-stroke. The test was sensitive to changes over time. Apraxia of use and spatial tests correlated highly with the Token test but there were no or weak relationships to age, education or earlier stroke. The Token test showed a strong correlation to a cognitive test, the MMSE, indicating its requirements for both linguistic and cognitive abilities.

Pragmatic Language Disorder in Parkinson’s Disease and the Potential Effect of Cognitive Reserve

“…We believe that this explanation is not sound for several reasons: first, if this was the case, we would have found impaired performance in all language comprehension tasks (whereas in fact we did not find any impairment in Figurative Language 1 and Figurative Language 2); second, the PCA results suggest that Token Test, together with other tests, is part of a more global pattern of correlations (including also tests in which language comprehension is minimal if not absent, as in the SET task). A better explanation can be found considering that the Token Test does not only tap language comprehension but also general cognitive abilities and highly correlates with global tests such as MMSE (Agrell et al, 1995). So, the importance of the Token Test in pragmatic comprehension is better accounted for when considering that such test captures also general cognitive abilities.…”