Clinical significance of change in language performance: social validation of writing response improvement in aphasia

Lapointe, Leonard L. and Katz, Richard C. and Braden, Cindy L.
Clinical significance of change in language performance: social validation of writing response improvement in aphasia. Aphasiology, 13(9-11), 1999, pages 787-792.

Abstract

Evaluation of change in performance based on feedback from people other than the experimenters has became known as 'social validation' and assumes an increasingly important role in models of treatment efficacy. This study selected a sample of 141 community members diverse in age, education and occupation to judge the accuracy of changes in writing samples from individuals with aphasia. Counterbalanced pairs of writing samples derived from sentences on the Porch Index of Communicative Ability (PICA) were judged. Subjects were able to discern and judge changes in writing samples when compared to actual measured changes at levels far above chance. These findings lend social validation support to measured improvement in writing performance of individuals with aphasia.