Validity of Multiple-Sentence Reading Comprehension Tests for Aphasic Adults

¹ Veterans Administration Medical Center, Minneapolis, MN

This study assessed the passage dependency of multiple-sentence reading test items from the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (Goodglass & Kaplan, 1983), the Minnesota Test for Differential Diagnosis of Aphasia (Schuell, 1965), Examining for Aphasia (Eisenson, 1954), the Reading Comprehension Battery for Aphasia (LaPointe & Horner, 1979), and the Western Aphasia Battery (Kertesz, 1982). More than half of the test items from these reading tests were answered correctly by a significantly greater than chance number of both aphasic and non-brain-damaged adults without reading the passages whose comprehension the items purported to test. These results suggest that published tests for assessing aphasic persons' comprehension of multiple-sentence passages do not provide valid estimates of such persons' ability to comprehend information from printed texts.