| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立台北護理學院 === 聽語障礙科學研究所 === 98 === There are some aphasic patients who need to rely on AAC to communicate properly, especially the nonfluent ones. However, in Taiwan, there are no structural tools to evaluate aphasic patients’ ability of using pictures, gestures or other modalities to communicate. Therefore, the author wanted to investigate the AAC needs of individuals with nonfluent aphasia in Taiwan. And the aim of this study was to translate and modify “The Multimodal Communication Screening Task for Persons with Aphasia” (MCST-A) created by Garrett and Lasker. In order to achieve the goals above, the author carries out a two-phase clinical test. Phase one was the pilot test, and phase two was the field test. The subjects of each test were10 and 30 nonfluent aphasic patients respectively.
The result showed that the average test time was an hour and sixteen minutes. Among the subtests, the patients performed best in two parts--“communicating one-single messages” and “categorizing.” On the other hand, they performed worst on “combining 2-to-3 symbols.” In general, most nonfluent aphasic patients were equipped with good potential for AAC because they could search for a specific page or symbols in the booklet and pointed out the target messages directly. Although at first, many nonfluent test-takers could only convey one-symbol messages, but with some cues, they could combine 2-to-3 symbols and described the photos in proper order after a demonstration by others. Meanwhile, the author found out that the aphasia severities of the nonfluent patients had greater impact on their MCST-A performance than the aphasia types. Among the 30 nonfluent aphasic patients, the moderate patients delivered messages more properly than the severe patients, and the moderate patients needed fewer cues than the severe ones. Thus, moderate aphasic patients were often classified as independent communicators, while severe aphasic patients were often classified as partner-dependent communicators.
According to the results given above, the revised Chinese version of MCST-A was useful for assessing nonfluent aphasic patients’ multimodal communication ability and their AAC needs. Although the reliability of cue and attempt numbers varied greatly in different subtests, the inter-rater and test-retest reliability of message delivery adequacy was good. Moreover, the scoring for each item was based on adequacy performance. In summary, the revised Chinese version of MCST-A is applicable for nonfluent aphasic patients in Taiwan.
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