Western Aphasia Battery-Revised

Copyright: 2006, Harcourt Assessment

Where to purchase: psychcorp.com

Administration time: bedside 15 min, oral / verbal section approximately 30-45 min, reading, writing, apraxia constructional, visual spatial, calculation, supplemental writing and reading sections approximately 45-60 min

What does it test: (pg1)

Measures linguistic and non-linguitic skills.

-Linguistic skills: Speech Content, fluency, auditory comprehension, repetition

naming and reading, writing

-Non-linguistic skills: drawing, calculations, block design and apraxia

Target Population (pg1)

The WAB-R is appropriate for English speaking adults or teenage children with known or suspected acquired neurological disorders. Ex: stroke, head injury, dementia

Test Components

Examiners manual, stimulus book, record form part 1 (oral language section)

Testing Environment Suggestions:

-Patient should be alert and rested. Patient should have access to any

device they may need, for example: hearing aids, dentures, eye

glasses

-Room quiet and well lit.

-Patient should be able to see the stimulus book.

-Remove all extraneous materials from table.

-Sit across from patient.

-Keep record form away from patient view.

-Preferable to audiotape or videotape.

Administration and Scoring

Bedside:

-Need: beside record form, picture of some complexity for patient to

describe, coin, sheet of paper and pen

-Directions are listed for each category on the record form.

-Scoring: directions are listed for each category on the bedside form

Record form part 1:

-Refer to record form for materials needed, scoring rules, and administration

Record form part 2:

-Refer to record form for material needed, scoring rules, and administration

Diagnostic Purposes

-Aphasia quotient (AQ), gives you a summary value of the individual’s

aphasia deficient and is proportional to the severity of aphasia

regardless of the type or etiology.

-AQ of 0-25 =very severe

-AQ of 26-50=Severe

-AQ of 51-75=moderate

-AQ of 76 above=mild

-optional: Language Quotient (LQ), combines oral and written language

scores. Lesser prognostic value when compared to the AQ.

-optional: Cortical Quotient (CQ), nonverbal test, apraxia, written language in addition to the AQ to provide a balanced summary of focal cortical function.

-Tells you the aphasia classification (ex. global, broca's, isolation, wernicke's)

Other Test Uses

- Used to assess dementia and Alzheimer patients, because it measures language deterioration, and this is an important sign in early dementia.

Use for determining therapeutic strategies

- Upon completion of the test assessment of patients assets and deficits will help to guide treatment and management through determining the presence, severity and type of aphasia.

-“Classifying the type of aphasia, in addition to determining its severity provides you with a clinically valid baseline for research diagnosis and prognosis” pg. 1

Western Aphasia Battery-Revised

Andrew Kertesz, M.D., F.R.C.P.(C)

Record form part 2-supplemental

Additional Test Components:

-Bedside record form: designed for ease and use in hospital or acute care settings

-Test objects: are provided with the test.

-Additional materials you must provide: stop watch, unlined writing paper, pen, matches, paperback or hardback book, telephone

Writing:

-writing upon request

-writing out-put

-writing to dictation

-writing dictative words

-alphabet and numbers

-dictated letters and numbers

-copying a sentence

Reading:

-comprehension of sentences

-reading commands

-written word-object choice matching

-written word-picture choice matching

-picture-written word choice matching

-spoken word-written word choice matching

-letter discrimination

-spelled word recognition

-spelling

Apraxia

Constructional visuospatial and calculation

-drawing

-block design and calculation

Ravens Coloured Progressive Matrices

Supplemental Writing and Reading

-writing irregular words to dictation

-writing non-words to dictation

-reading irregular words

-reading non-words

What does it Test?

SUBTESTS: Record Form Part 1

Repetition: measures patient’s ability to repeat single words of increasing length, compound words, numbers, number-word combinations, high and low probability sentences, and sentences of increasing length and grammatical complexity.

Spontaneous speech: Designed to elicit conversational speech and to measure functional communication. Also measure information content, speech fluency, lexical access, paraphasias, and grammatical competence

-Conversational questions

-Picture descriptions

Standardization

-Normative sample: 150 with aphasia, 59 controls (the control group had similar background and educational experiences) gender ratio of male to female 99:51.

-Patients who could not take the test in English were not included.

- Validity: The average validity scores between the WAB and NCCEA range from .82 to .96.

- Internal consistency: alpha coefficient was .91 indicating high internal consistency.

-Bentler’s coefficient theta was .97 measure of how well a composite score reflects each of the components.

- Inter-rater reliability: .97 average. However spontaneous speech fluency was significantly lower due to variability in requiring a judgmental score from the administrator.

- Test-retest: is high within the .90 and above.

-Test items were constructed to become increasingly difficult.

The End!

Happy Fall!

The End

Happy Class!

Auditory verbal comprehension: measures a patient’s auditory verbal comprehension of sentences with relational prepositions and increasingly complex grammatical constructions, single nouns in different categories and sentences of increasing length.

-yes/no questions

-auditory word recognition

-sequential commands

Naming and word finding: tasks of this test are designed to measure a patient’s naming and semantic processing abilities, the effect of semantic and phonological cueing on the patient’s responses and word-finding abilities.

-object naming

-word fluency

-sentence completion

-responsive speech

Purpose

An Example:

Here is something small...

30

But we can move beyond the present.

Why?

Purpose: (pg1)

1) Determines the presence, severity, and type of aphasia.

2) To measure the patients level of performance in order to provide a baseline for detecting any change over time.

3) To provide a comprehensive assessment of a patients language assets and deficits in order to guide treatment and management.

4) To infer the location and etiology of the lesion causing aphasia

Here is some context. Provide some common ground.

Or something from the present, that we should look beyond.

So...

Wowing template. Click through in 20 steps.

Test Info.

Photo credits: 'horizon' by pierreyves @ flickr