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A preliminary Cantonese version of the Amsterdam-Nijmegen Everyday Language Test (ANELT)

Sampo Law1* and Jessica Manwai Lo1
  • 1 University of Hong Kong, Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Hong Kong, SAR China

Introduction Enhancing the functional communication ability of people with aphasia (PWA) is a main goal in language rehabilitation for clinicians and PWA. Functional communication cannot appropriately be measured with impairment-based tools, as linguistic performance and performance of daily functional activities often do not correlate (e.g. Marini et al., 2007). Current assessment tools of the latter may take the approach of direct observation by clinician of interactions between client and communicative partners (e.g. ASHA Functional Communication Measures, http://www.asha.org/NOMS/), clinician’s observation and input from caregiver (e.g. ASHA Functional Assessment of Communication Skills for Adults, Frattali et al., 1995), or eliciting responses from PWA to simulated scenarios of daily activities (e.g. Amsterdam-Nijmegen Everyday Language Test (ANELT), Blomert et al., 1994; Communication Activities of Daily Living – II (CADL-2), Holland et al., 1999). While the CADL-2 focuses on one’s verbal and non-verbal ability to carry out basic daily activities, the ANELT targets verbal effectiveness in mildly impaired PWA. The ANELT, originally developed in Dutch, is now available in English, German, and Swedish (Bastiaanse, personal communication; Blomert & Buslach, 1994; Laska, 2007). Its measures of verbal adequacy are based on subjective ratings of “comprehensibility” and “intelligibility”. More recently, quantitative measures of information and efficiency have been developed (Ruiter et al., 2011). The present study aimed to construct a Cantonese version of the ANELT with objective quantitative scores to fill the gap of functional communication assessment in the language. Method The ANELT was first translated into Cantonese using double translation (Grisay, 2003) to ensure consistency and equivalence. It was then piloted on three healthy Cantonese-speaking adults aged between 48 and 59 years. Five items were identified as culturally inappropriate and subsequently modified to ensure cultural appropriateness. The modified Cantonese version of ANELT (henceforth, CANELT) was administered to 60 neurologically-unimpaired native speakers of Cantonese (42 females) equally divided into three age groups: 60-69, 70-79, and over 80 years of age, following the elicitation procedures in the ANELT. The participants’ verbal responses were audiotaped and orthographically transcribed. A target list of content words (or informative words, iwords) was compiled for each of the 20 scenarios using a 25% cutoff criterion. The iword lists formed the basis for scoring responses and computing measures of lexical and communication efficiency. The data were subject to two-way ANOVA to assess the effect of age and comparability in difficulty across test items. Results and Discussion Two scenarios were found to describe situations that had never been experienced by at least 15% of the participants. They were, therefore, considered locally inappropriate and required further modification. The 20 items were divided into four subsets potentially differing in difficulty level according to the number of iwords and their frequency of production. Statistical results revealed that the oldest group produced the fewest iwords but with highest communication efficiency. The subsets differed in all three measures, reflecting different levels of demands. Based on these findings, age-normed performance and two parallel versions of test items of CANELT are developed for further evaluation in clinical settings.

References

Blomert, L. & Buslach, D. C. (1994). Amsterdam-Nijmegen Everyday Language Test (ANELT) – Deutsche Fassung. Lisse, Niederlande: Swets & Zeitlinger.
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Frattali, C. M., Thompson, C., Holland, A., Wohl, A., & Ferketic, M. (1995). American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Functional Assessment of Communication Skills for Adults. Rockville, MD: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
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Laska, A. C. (2007). Aphasia in acute stroke. Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. (Downloaded from https://openarchive.ki.se/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10616/39894/thesis.pdf?sequence=1)
Marini, A., Caltagirone, C., Pasqualetti, P., & Carlomagno, S. (2007). Patterns of language improvement in adults with non-chronic non-fluent aphasia after specific therapies. Aphasiology, 21, 164–186.
Ruiter, M. B., Kolk, H. H. J., Rietveld, T. C. M., Dijkstra, N., & Lotgering, E. (2011). Towards a quantitative measure of verbal effectiveness and efficiency in the Amsterdam-Nijmegen Everyday Language Test (ANELT). Aphasiology, 25, 961-975.

Keywords: Cantonese, ANELT, normative data, Functional communication, Quantitative scores

Conference: Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting , Baltimore, United States, 5 Nov - 7 Nov, 2017.

Presentation Type: poster presentation

Topic: Aphasia

Citation: Law S and Lo J (2019). A preliminary Cantonese version of the Amsterdam-Nijmegen Everyday Language Test (ANELT). Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting . doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2017.223.00090

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Received: 11 Apr 2017; Published Online: 25 Jan 2019.

* Correspondence: Prof. Sampo Law, University of Hong Kong, Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR China, splaw@hku.hk