Publication ｜Sophia Linguistica
Katsuya Kawakami, Hiroyo Yoshihata, Mitsuko Shindo, and Chikashi Michimata
This study aimed to develop a discourse evaluation test for people with aphasia using
correct information units (CIUs), which measure the communicative informativeness and
effectiveness of discourse. Focusing on narrative discourse, we clarified the differences
in discourse between 23 aphasic and 62 healthy adults by using CIUs to analyze their
descriptions of pictures. Our main study analyzed the characteristics of the groups’
discourse using the number of words, CIUs, and %CIUs, with the following results:
(1) a comparison of the quantitative variables during discourse among the healthy, nonfluent,
and fluent groups showed that the number of CIUs was significantly higher in
both the healthy and the fluent group than in the non-fluent group; and (2) the %CIUs
were significantly higher in the healthy group than in the aphasic group. We therefore
concluded that the number of CIUs is a useful index to analyze the discourse of people
with non-fluent aphasia and that %CIUs is a useful index for distinguishing between the
discourse of healthy people and those with aphasia.
