The Adaptation and Standardization of the Catalan Version of the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (CAT-CAT): a Preliminary Study

EasyChair Preprint 6489

Abstract

Introduction
Very few studies have examined the linguistic abilities of Catalan-speaking aphasics with the purpose to develop an assessment tool. The diagnosis of aphasia in Catalan speakers is mostly based on clinical observations or through assessment tests in their second language. The goal of the present study is to present the preliminary results of the ongoing standardization process of the adaptation of the Catalan version of the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (CAT; Swinburn et al., 2005).
Methods
We present the data on the cognitive and linguistic parts of the CAT-CAT from 43 healthy participants (20-80 years old; 27 women; 40 right-handed) and 9 people with different subtypes of aphasia and etiologies (45-78 years old, 6 women, all right-handed, time post-onset: 5-11 years). All the participants were native speakers of Catalan. The test consists of 6 cognitive tasks to evaluate the possibility of associated cognitive deficits, and 21 tasks with the purpose to assess their linguistic behavior.
Results
The descriptive results showed that the performance of healthy individuals on the cognitive and linguistic parts was at ceiling. The performance of aphasic subjects on the cognitive tasks was slightly better than their performance on the linguistic tasks, but worse than the healthy subjects’ performance. Regarding the linguistic evaluation, meaningful differences could be observed between the performance of both groups on different tasks.
Conclusions
The preliminary results suggest that the CAT-CAT was sensitive to the linguistic deficit of the Catalan-speaking aphasic subjects that participated in the study and, hence, that it can be a useful tool to assess their language skills in their native language. We are now broadening our sample to conduct the statistical analysis to determine its reliability as a diagnostic tool.

Keyphrases: Catalan, aphasia, assessment, diagnosis

@booklet{EasyChair:6489,
  author    = {Io Salmons and Helena Muntané-Sánchez and Anna Gavarró},
  title     = {The Adaptation and Standardization of the Catalan Version of the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (CAT-CAT): a Preliminary Study},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6489},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}