Interpretation of fables and proverbs by African Americans with and without aphasia

There is a paucity of performance information for African American adults w ith aphasia on appraisal tasks, especially in comparison with performance b y neurologically normal African American adults. We administered language i mpairment, functional communication, and discourse measures to neurological ly normal African American adults and African American adults with aphasia. The neurologically normal group performed significantly better on the lang uage impairment measure (Western Aphasia Battery), the functional communica tion measure (ASHA Functional Assessment of Communication Skills for Adults ), providing the lesson in a fable discourse task, and spontaneous interpre tation of proverbs. No significant differences between groups were observed on a picture description fable task or in performance on a multiple-choice proverb task. Few significant relationships were observed among measures i n the neurologically normal group; however, the group with aphasia displaye d a variety of significant relationships in their performance on the langua ge impairment, functional communication, fable lesson, and interpretation o f proverbs tasks. The results imply that fable and proverb discourse tasks may be valuable supplemental measures for characterizing communicative comp etence in African American adults who have aphasia.