Estudos sobre a avaliação da afasia expressiva: material e procedimentos

Abstract

This work addresses the improvement and development of material and procedures of evaluation of adults with expressive aphasia. It presents a study of receptive and expressive language, and subdivides each category into one preparation phase, with the participation of seemingly healthy adults, and an application phase, with the participation of adults with expressive aphasia. The study of receptive language examines the short form of Token Test. During the preparation phase, the performance of 150 adults hailing from two cities (Belém and São Luís) was observed. Schooling was a significant factor in scores, and great heterogeneity was observed in the low schooling group (1 to 4 years), possibly due to literacy level. The application phase saw the observation of the performance of six patients with expressive aphasia who, generally, scored relatively low, although some individuals produced better results. The score percentiles of the control group are considered viable as provisional norms to evaluate the performance of the aphasics. During the study of expressive language, material and procedure of aphasia evaluation was developed considering two language use contexts. In the preparation phase, 20 participants were asked to name 70 photographs to observe conformity with given names. As a result of this verification, photographs with 90 to 100% conformity were selected, considering the structure of emitted words (e.g., alternating vowels and consonants), and two conditions to be applied in the next phase were randomly assigned to the pictures: tact (task of naming by visual confrontation) and mand (task involving request). Two adults with expressive aphasia participated in the application phase. When considering the aphasics’ self-corrections, some difference can be observed betweenIV the two verbal contexts, but with opposite results for both aphasics. The conclusion is that the procedure used in the mand context is viable in an evaluation situation and should be further investigated. The expansion of the verbal classes (tact and mand) is recommended as well as their application at different occasions in time in order to verify whether or not there are consistent differences.