The adaptation process of the Comprehensive Aphasia Test into CAT-Turkish: psycholinguistic and clinical considerations

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background and Aim Cross-linguistic adaptations of aphasia assessment tools in Turkey are needed to improve aphasia assessment and rehabilitation with individuals speaking languages other than well-resourced languages. Aligned with this need, we conducted several studies to propose an adaptation of “The Comprehensive Aphasia Test” (CAT) into Turkish. Methods During this adaptation process; (a) lexical/linguistic and visual stimuli in CAT’s Language Battery subtests were evaluated by examining their imageability, familiarity, and name agreement features through rating studies, and two pilot studies for (b) Cognitive Screening and (c) Language Battery sections were carried out. In the stimuli norming studies, 71 undergraduate students (aged 20–24) rated 236 words in the Imageability and Familiarity tasks; 40 participants (aged 30–60) named 244 pictures in the Name Agreement task. Two sections of the CAT-TR were administered to different groups of subjects with aphasia (PWA) and matched controls. Fourteen PWA (and 14 controls) were presented the Cognitive Screening section, and a different group (PWA = 20, controls = 20) completed the Language Battery section. Results The imageability and familiarity ratings of 236 words and name agreement (% – H statistic) values of 244 pictures were calculated. Imageability and familiarity ratings of the words had a positive strong correlation with each other. Items with a name agreement of 85% or more were considered high name agreement. As anticipated, the control groups both in the Cognitive Screening and the Language Battery sections performed better than the PWA group. As a result, no further adaptive changes were suggested for these sections. Conclusion Results of these studies have shown that the Comprehensive Aphasia Test-Turkish is culturally and linguistically appropriate for Turkish speakers with aphasia. Therefore, future studies should assess its validity and reliability, and establish norms for its clinical interpretation.