Measuring discourse coherence in anomic aphasia using Rhetorical Structure Theory.
Anthony Pak-Hin Kong, Anastasia Linnik, Sam-Po Law and 1 others
PMID 28306394WHAT IT FOUND
Cantonese speakers with anomic aphasia told stories and described procedures that listeners rated less understandable and less clear.
They used fewer meaningful units and made more word errors, so therapy may need word-level targets as well as discourse.
Key findings
01Speakers with anomic aphasia produced fewer meaningful units and made more word-level errors than matched non-brain-damaged speakers in both story and procedure tasks.
02Naive listeners rated the aphasia group's discourse as less understandable and less clear than the control group's discourse in both tasks.
03More failed or incomplete meaningful units and more word errors were associated with lower listener coherence ratings.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only 15 people with anomic aphasia and 15 controls were studied, all Cantonese, so results may not apply to other languages or aphasia types. Each speaker produced only one story and one procedure sample, so day-to-day variation is unknown. The study did not test treatment, so it cannot show that word-level therapy improves coherence. Correlations were used because of small numbers and ceiling effects, so they cannot prove that word errors or incomplete units cause low coherence. The measures have not been shown to be stable over time for individual clinical decisions. The two tasks differed in picture support and topic familiarity, so genre differences may reflect task demands rather than pure language ability. Naive university students rated the samples without shared background with the speakers, which may differ from everyday communication partners.
Declared interests
The authors reported no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that word-level errors alone cause poor coherence in anomic aphasia. The study found correlations in a small group and did not test treatment, so it cannot prove cause or predict individual response.