BECLA, a new assessment battery for acquired deficits of language: Normative data from Quebec-French healthy younger and older adults

Abstract

Compared to English, for which there exist numerous tests and batteries for the assessment of acquired deficits of language, the tools available to assess French-speaking individuals are much more limited. The Batterie d'Évaluation Cognitive du Langage (BECLA) was purposely developed to fulfill the need for French assessment tools based on theoretical models of cognitive psychology. It comprises 19 tasks, designed to assess each of the components and routes involved in single word processing in order to identify the functional locus/loci of impairment. In this article, we describe the BECLA and we present normative data for individuals 18–94years of age (N=248). The sample was stratified by age, gender, and years of education, according to the Institut de la statistique du Québec, in order to be representative of the French-Quebec population. Percentile scores were provided for each BECLA task in order to show the relative rank of each raw score according to significant correlates. The BECLA is a new clinical, theoretically based assessment battery, useful for identifying and characterizing acquired deficits of language in younger and older adults.