Main Concept, Sequencing, and Story Grammar Analyses of Cinderella Narratives in a Large Sample of Persons with Aphasia

Abstract

Recently, a multilevel analytic approach called Main Concept, Sequencing, and Story Grammar (MSSG) was presented along with preliminary normative information. MSSG analyses leverage the strong psychometrics and rich procedural knowledge of both main concept analysis and story grammar component coding, complementing it with easy-to-obtain sequencing information for a rich understanding of discourse informativeness and macrostructure. This study is the next critical step for demonstrating the clinical usefulness of MSSG’s six variables (main concept composite, sequencing, main concept+sequencing, essential story grammar components, total episodic components, and episodic complexity) for persons with aphasia (PWAs). We present descriptive statistical information for MSSG variables for a large sample of PWAs and compare their performance to a large sample of persons not brain injured (PNBIs). We observed significant differences between PWAs and PNBIs for all MSSG variables. These differences occurred at the omnibus group level and for each aphasia subtype, even for PWAs with very mild impairment that is not detected with standardized aphasia assessment. Differences between PWAs and PNBIs were also practically significant, with medium to large effect sizes observed for nearly all aphasia subtypes and MSSG variables. This work deepens our understanding of discourse informativeness and macrostructure in PWAs and further develops an efficient tool for research and clinical use. Future research should investigate ways to expand MSSG analyses and to improve sensitivity and specificity.

Spectral Resting-State EEG (rsEEG) in Chronic Aphasia Is Reliable, Sensitive, and Correlates With Functional Behavior

“…While naming is the hallmark impairment of aphasia, confrontation naming tasks such as the BNT may not adequately represent difficulties in connected speech (e.g., Richardson et al, 2018). In contrast, the MC composite score has demonstrated sufficient sensitivity to describe both impaired and control discourse across a wide range of performance (Dalton and Richardson, 2019;Richardson et al, 2021). These results further amplify calls to utilize discourse measures as the primary outcome for aphasia research studies since discourse performance is a better index of the functional communication outcomes desired by PWAs (Brady et al, 2016).…”

Applying core lexicon analysis in patients with anomic aphasia: Based on Mandarin AphasiaBank

“…From the view of discourse, there have been adequate pieces of evidence from the English corpus with coherence, main concept analysis, story grammar and systemic functional linguistics analysis (Richardson et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2021). As for Mandarin, no one has studied it so far.…”

“…However, infrequent use of discourse analysis in clinical settings has been reported, owing to the complexity of heavy preparatory work and post‐processing for traditional narrative assessment (Bryant et al., 2017; Maddy et al., 2015). The common methods for discourse analysis such as coherence (Hazamy & Obermeyer, 2020; Kong et al., 2018; Linnik et al., 2021; Olness & Ulatowska, 2011; Harris Wright & Capilouto, 2012; Zhang et al., 2021), main concept analysis (Dalton & Richardson, 2015, 2019; Dillow, 2013; Richardson & Dalton, 2016, 2020; Richardson et al., 2021), story grammar (Greenslade et al., 2020; Richardson et al., 2021) and systemic functional linguistic analysis (Groenewold & Armstrong, 2018; Law et al., 2018) could reflect the structural and linguistic components of language, while the transcriptions may cost much more time. To some extent, it is unrealistic for clinicians to complete a complex transcription of language samples and define grammatical categories and errors.…”

Short term memory in aphasia: effects of modality and relationship with Western Aphasia Battery-R performance

“…As per the WAB-R classification scheme, their aphasia sub-types included: anomic aphasia (n=14), Broca's aphasia (n = 9), conduction aphasia (n = 8), global aphasia (n = 1), transcortical motor aphasia (n = 1), Wernicke's aphasia (n = 3), and non-aphasic (with AQ > 93.8, n = 9). It is well-documented that PWA who score in the so-called non-aphasic range demonstrate language impairments (Fromm et al, 2017;Richardson et al, 2021) and thus were included in the present study. Participant details are provided in Table 1.…”