Three Methods of Quantifying the Quality of Communication in Aphasia

Conversations among 12 dyads, in which one of the individuals had aphasia, were investigated to develop reliable and valid methods capable of quantifying the quality of communication in aphasia. This paper reports the findings of three methods: (1) a ratio of facilitatory/non-facilitatory conversational behaviors exhibited by the unimpaired conversational partner; (2) a comparison of 20 speech pathologists’ and 20 naïve viewers’ perceptual ratings of the overall quality of the conversation, supportiveness of the unimpaired partner, effectiveness of the individual with aphasia, and a rank ordering of the dyads from “best” to “worst”; and (3) an analysis of conversational symmetry