Introduction

The Comprehensive Aphasia Test (CAT; Swinburn, Porter, & Howard, 2004) is an extensive standardized and formal battery designed to evaluate linguistic and cognitive impairments as well as psychosocial deficits among people with aphasia (PWA). It has been widely used by clinicians in western countries to estimate the impact of aphasia on PWA’s quality of life and to monitor the treatment recovery and outcome overtime (Howard et al., 2010). 

The Cantonese version of the Western Aphasia Battery (CAB; Yiu, 1992) has been the most popular aphasia battery in Hong Kong since the 1990s. The aim of this study was to explore the development and adaptation of a Cantonese version of CAT (i.e., Cant-CAT) for Chinese PWA speakers in Hong Kong. Specifically, modifications of test items involved careful considerations of the unique linguistic properties (e.g., word length, sentence structure) and psychometric variables (e.g., frequency, imageability, regularity) of Cantonese as well as appropriate Chinese culture. 

Methods 

The adaptation process was divided into two phases. In Phase 1, original test items in each CAT subtest were translated into Chinese and modified with careful control of the psycholinguistic variables specific to Cantonese. Phase 2 involves piloting the preliminary version of Cant-CAT (i.e., with new items proposed in Phase 1) among eight healthy middle-aged (45-65 years) native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong.

Conclusion

It is expected that the final deliverables of this investigation will lead to three important implications. First, a new and more comprehensive formal assessment of aphasia will become available for clinicians who work with Cantonese-speaking PWA. Second, with further validation, the Cant-CAT can provide clinicians with a comprehensive profile useful for diagnosing aphasia and treatment planning in PWA.