Individual variability on discourse measures over repeated sampling times in persons with aphasia

Abstract

Background: Although persons with aphasia typically have difficulty with the production of language at the level of discourse, there is a paucity of reliable measurement systems to quantify the characteristics of spoken language. Nicholas and Brookshire (Citation1993) developed one of the few standardised, rule-based systems to quantify the informativeness of spoken language samples. While the authors reported temporal stability for all measures, they also noted variability at the individual level. Because individual data were not reported, it is difficult to determine the nature and extent of that variability.