Construct Validity and Reliability of Working Memory Tasks for People with Aphasia

DeDe, Gayle and Knilans, Jessica and Ricca, Matthew and Trubl, Brittany (2013) Construct Validity and Reliability of Working Memory Tasks for People with Aphasia. [Clinical Aphasiology Paper]

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Abstract

Working memory (WM) is a cognitive system that maintains activation of select information in the service of goal-directed behavior (Baddeley, 2003). Previous research suggests that WM contributes to language impairments in aphasia (e.g., Caspari et al., 1998; Friedman & Gvion, 2012). However, the WM measures used in studies of neurologically healthy adults typically involve verbal production and often use digits or letters, both of which may be susceptible to errors in people with aphasia (PWA). Thus, it is difficult to separate WM deficits from general language deficits in PWA. Tasks that have been used to measure WM in PWA include pointing tasks, n-back tasks (e.g., Christensen & Wright, 2010) and non-linguistic tasks such as block span (Lang & Quitz, 2010). To our knowledge, no study has established the construct validity of measures used with PWA by comparing performance on them to measures used more commonly with neurologically healthy populations. The goals of this study were to (1) develop a battery of measures to assess WM in people across a range of aphasia severities and (2) establish the construct validity of those measures by comparing neurologically healthy adults’ performance on the new battery to a well-established (“gold standard”) measure of WM.

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