Introduction

Discourse abilities are frequently impacted by aphasia, and there are several potential advantages to analyzing discourse in this clinical population. Casilio and colleagues (2019) recently created the auditory-perceptual rating of connected speech in aphasia (APROCSA) system, which helps overcome barriers to discourse analysis (e.g., limited time and resources) by combining advantages of both quantitative linguistic analysis and qualitative rating scales. However, the APROCSA currently lacks measures of functional and pragmatic language use in discourse.

This study aims to expand upon the existing structural APROCSA features by identifying perceptual features that characterize functional and pragmatic aspects of discourse abilities in adults with chronic post-stroke aphasia. We aim to evaluate the inter-rater reliability of these functional perceptual feature ratings.

Methods

We used the same 5-point perceptual rating scale and included the same group of 24 participants as Casilio and colleagues (2019). Audiovisual language samples were drawn from the Free Speech Sample portion of the English PWA Protocol Data within the AphasiaBank database (MacWhinney et al., 2011). Following a calibration protocol, three experienced aphasia researchers will score nine perceptual variables on a 5-point scale. 

Results & Conclusion

Analyses will be conducted using the software package R. Interrater reliability will be calculated for each variable of interest via intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs).