British Amendments to an American Test for Aphasia: Outline and Discussion

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Minnesota Test for Differential Diagnosis of Aphasia is a battery of tests devised by the American speech pathologist Dr Hildred Schuell and associates at the V.A. Hospital Minneapolis, (first published in 1965). We have devised a set of British amendments to this test to replace certain sections which, from the point of view of content, have an American bias, and which, in many cases, have tended to be omitted by British therapists using his test. We have administered these sections of the test, both original and amended versions, to a sample of normal and dysphasic populations, throughout Britain. Our results demonstrate that there is no significant difference between the scores on the original and amended versions for the normal sample. A previous study has already demonstrated that the cultural bias of the test is not revealed numerically in testing normals, because they are able to adjust to and compensate for the American orientation of the test material. (Allan 1972). With the dysphasic population, there was a significant reduction in error score on the British version of one of the tests subjected to statistical analysis. Statistical comparison of the results on other amended tests did not reveal any significant tendency. The experience and comments of clinicians, however, indicate that the British amendments are more suitable for use in this country, and in order to include all parts of the test, essential in certain cases.

This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit: