Social validity of changes in informativeness and efficiency of aphasic discourse following Linguistic Specific Treatment (LST)

This study presents the results of an analysis of pragmatic aspects of lang uage samples obtained from five agrammatic aphasic individuals prior to and following Linguistic Specific Treatment (LST). Clinically and statisticall y significant positive changes in informativeness and efficiency were docum ented in posttreatment samples. Analysis of communicative competence (i.e., naive listeners' ratings of pre- and posttreatment audiotaped samples), wa s undertaken to examine the social validity of quantified changes. Mean rat ings across listeners were computed to evaluate their subjective perception s of general communicative constructs. Results indicated that objectively m easured changes in pragmatic aspects were perceptible to naive listeners, h owever, to varying degrees across participants and constructs. (C) 2001 Aca demic Press.