ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: The comprehension and production of connected language are essential for effective communication. However, few assessment and intervention programs requiring connected language have been made available in Brazilian Portuguese. One connected language sampling procedure, the Story Retell Procedure (SRP), has been widely studied in English and primarily for people with aphasia. The SRP employs 12 stories, whose individual plots are quite different and still equivalent in terms of verbal productivity measures. The first objective of this study was to present the translation and adaptation of the SRP stories into Portuguese and to determine whether the translations are similar to English stories. The second objective was to analyze a small group of healthy adults' responses to this assessment, thus observing whether the retellings of the SRP story forms in Portuguese would be similar to each other in the number of words, information units (IUs), and propositions - as demonstrated in English. METHODS: This preliminary study translated and adapted into Portuguese, the 12 original English SRP stories. Only small cultural adaptations were made, preserving the essential content of the stories. The stories were then presented to 14 healthy adults, and the participants' retellings from each story were compared to the other stories regarding the number of words, IUs, and propositions. RESULTS: Few differences were found in the retellings considering the variables analyzed. Particularly, the retells of Gasolina (Gas), Biblioteca (Library), Empréstimo (Loan), Sanduíche (Sandwich), Futebol (Baseball), and Multas (Ticket) were not significantly different in the three aspects investigated in this study (percentages of words, IUs, and propositions). CONCLUSION: The SRP stories adapted to Portuguese, despite having a quite close number of words, IUs, and propositions to those in the original stories, did not result in retellings with similar number of words, IUs, or propositions across stories. Nonetheless, the parameters analyzed were not significantly different among the majority of the stories, and some were nearly identical. This study identified the SRP stories that can be equivalently used in assessment, reassessment, and possibly in the rehabilitation of patients with communication disorders. Likewise, differences must be considered when the stories are used with pathological populations.
Subject(s)
Aphasia , Language , Adult , Humans , Child , Portugal , Child Language , Language Tests , BrazilABSTRACT
RESUMO: Objetivo: analisar os discursos narrativo, descritivo, conversacional e procedural de indivíduos afásicos fluentes e compará-los com indivíduos saudáveis. Métodos: foram selecionados, por meio de amostragem sistemática, 22 indivíduos afásicos fluentes com queixas de dificuldade discursiva e que apresentam alteração de linguagem pós-acometimento em Sistema Nervoso Central decorrente de Acidente Vascular Encefálico, que estão ou já estiveram em tratamento na instituição de origem. Estes foram pareados a indivíduos saudáveis de mesma idade e escolaridade e ambos os grupos foram submetidos a um protocolo de tarefas discursivas orais para avaliação dos discursos narrativo, explicativo, conversacional e procedural. Resultados: houve diferenças estatisticamente significantes na maioria das variáveis investigadas em todos os tipos de discursos tanto na análise quantitativa quanto na qualitativa. Conclusão: indivíduos afásicos apresentaram maior facilidade no discurso narrativo e maior dificuldade nos demais discursos, porém comparando-os aos indivíduos saudáveis apresentaram maior dificuldade em todos os gêneros discursivos orais.
ABSTRACT: Purpose: to analyze the narrative, descriptive, conversational and procedural discourse of fluent aphasics and to compare their performance with healthy individuals. Methods: the authors selected by a systematic sample 22 fluent aphasic individuals complaining of discursive difficulty and that presented language disorders post stroke. The individuals are or were in treatment in the institution of origin. The aphasic individuals were matched in age and education. Both groups were subjected to a protocol of oral discursive tasks to the evaluation of narrative, descriptive, conversational and procedural discourse. Results: in most of the investigated variables, there were statistically significant differences in all types of discourse in the quantitative and qualitative analysis. Conclusion: aphasic individuals presented better performance in narrative discourse and greater difficulty in the other discourse tasks, although when comparing their discourse with the healthy individuals' discourse they presented greater difficulty in all the oral discursive genres.
