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Purpose Analysis of connected speech in the field of adult neurogenic communication disorders is essential for research and clinical purposes, yet time and expertise are often cited as limiting factors. The purpose of this project was to create and evaluate an automated program to score and compute the measures from the Quantitative Production Analysis (QPA), an objective and systematic approach for measuring morphological and structural features of connected speech. Method The QPA was used to analyze transcripts of Cinderella stories from 109 individuals with acute–subacute left hemisphere stroke. Regression slopes and residuals were used to compare the results of manual scoring and automated scoring using the newly developed C-QPA command in CLAN, a set of programs for automatic analysis of language samples. Results The C-QPA command produced two spreadsheet outputs: an analysis spreadsheet with scores for each utterance in the language sample, and a summary spreadsheet with 18 score totals from the analysis spreadsheet and an additional 15 measures derived from those totals. Linear regression analysis revealed that 32 of the 33 measures had good agreement; auxiliary complexity index was the one score that did not have good agreement. Conclusions The C-QPA command can be used to perform automated analyses of language transcripts, saving time and training and providing reliable and valid quantification of connected speech. Transcribing in CHAT, the CLAN editor, also streamlined the process of transcript preparation for QPA and allowed for precise linking of media files to language transcripts for temporal analyses.

Purpose Right-hemisphere brain damage (RHD) can affect pragmatic aspects of communication that may contribute to an impaired ability to gather information. Questions are an explicit means of gathering information. Question types vary in terms of the demands they place on cognitive resources. The purpose of this exploratory descriptive study is to test the hypothesis that adults with RHD differ from neurologically healthy adults in the types of questions asked during a structured task. Method Adults who sustained a single right-hemisphere stroke and neurologically healthy controls from the RHDBank Database completed the Unfamiliar Object Task of the RHDBank Discourse Protocol (Minga et al., 2016). Each task was video-recorded. Questions were transcribed using the Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts format. Coding and analysis of each response were conducted using Computerized Language Analysis (MacWhinney, 2000) programs. Results The types of questions used differed significantly across groups, with the RHD group using significantly more content questions and significantly fewer polar questions than the neurologically healthy control group. In their content question use, adults with RHD used significantly more “what” questions than other question subtypes. Conclusion Question-asking is an important aspect of pragmatic communication. Differences in the relative usage of question types, such as the reduced use of polar questions or increased use of content questions, may reflect cognitive limitations arising from RHD. Further investigations examining question use in this population are encouraged to replicate the current findings and to expand on the study tasks and measures. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.11936295

Background: Right hemisphere brain damage (RHD) can cause challenges with information gathering. Cognitive processes aid in implicit and explicit information gathering, yet the relationship between these processes and question-asking, the most explicit avenue of information gathering, has not been explored. The purpose of this exploratory descriptive study was to test the hypothesis that adults with RHD differ from controls in the types of questions produced during a conversational discourse task and whether observed differences are associated with cognitive limitations. Method: Adults with RHD ( n = 15) and controls ( n = 15) participated in a 5-min “first-encounter conversation” and were assessed for attention, memory, executive functioning (EF), visuospatial skills, and language domains using the Cognitive Linguistic Quick Test (CLQT). Questions produced during the conversation were coded and tallied by type: polar (yes/no), content (wh-), or alternative (A or B) using Computerized Language Analysis programs. Groups were compared on total questions used, use of questions by type, and CLQT domain scores; associations were computed between cognitive domain scores and question types. Results: Compared with controls, adults with RHD used half as many questions overall and scored significantly lower on the attention, executive function, and visuospatial domains of the CLQT. For the RHD group, there was a significant correlation between EF scores and the production of content and polar questions. Conclusions: The frequency of question-asking is important to understanding the communication profile in adults with RHD. Executive function, attention, and, to a lesser extent, visuospatial capabilities may contribute to question-asking behaviors in conversation in this population. The RHD Framework for Asking Questions is proposed to illustrate the potential areas of deficit in the question-asking process after RHD.

Purpose Spoken discourse analysis is commonly employed in the assessment and treatment of people living with aphasia, yet there is no standardization in assessment, analysis, or reporting procedures, thereby precluding comparison/meta-analyses of data and hindering replication of findings. An important first step is to identify current practices in collecting and analyzing spoken discourse in aphasia. Thus, this study surveyed current practices, with the goal of working toward standardizing spoken discourse assessment first in research settings with subsequent implementation into clinical settings. Method A mixed-methods (quantitative and qualitative) survey was publicized to researchers and clinicians around the globe who have collected and/or analyzed spoken discourse data in aphasia. The survey data were collected between September and November 2019. Results Of the 201 individuals who consented to participate, 189 completed all mandatory questions in the survey (with fewer completing nonmandatory response questions). The majority of respondents reported barriers to utilizing discourse including transcription, coding, and analysis. The most common barrier was time (e.g., lack of time). Respondents also indicated that there was a lack of, and a need for, psychometric properties and normative data for spoken discourse use in the assessment and treatment of persons with aphasia. Quantitative and qualitative results are described in detail. Conclusions The current survey study evaluated spoken discourse methods in aphasia across research and clinical settings. Findings from this study will be used to guide development of process standardization in spoken discourse and for the creation of a psychometric and normative property database. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16639510

AphasiaBank is a shared, multimedia database for the study of communication in aphasia. This article describes a variety of discourse measurement tools and teaching resources available at the AphasiaBank website. The discourse measurement tools include main concept analysis, core lexicon checklists, correct information unit computation techniques, and other automated analyses using the CLAN program. These tools can be used to measure a variety of aspects of language production for assessment as well as treatment evaluation and clinical research purposes. Importantly, they are intended to help make the discourse analysis process more efficient and reliable. Teaching resources include an online tutorial on aphasia, videos of typical behaviors seen in aphasia, group treatment videos, classroom activities, tutorial screencasts, and conference posters. These resources can be used for a variety of clinical and educational purposes. The AphasiaBank website is part of the larger TalkBank project which provides many other shared databases and resources that are relevant to professionals interested in communication and communication disorders.

Purpose This clinical focus article describes the development and use of the Famous People Protocol (FPP), a clinical tool for observing the strategies people with severe aphasia (PWSA) can use to communicate when speech is limited. Its goal is to provide a systematic approach to identifying individually appropriate communication strategies for PWSA. Method Though not a test, the FPP's development and pilot testing were consonant with qualitative approaches to test development. Eighty-one people with aphasia and 37 nonaphasic participants were given the current version of FPP and the Western Aphasia Battery–Revised (WAB-R; Kertesz, 2006 ). This clinical focus article reports on the 36 PWA who scored near or below the mean WAB score of the larger group. Results The FPP has a maximum score of 100 based on (a) identification of famous people in different categories, entertainers, athletes, U.S. presidents, sports figures, and internationally famous people, and (b) responses to additional questions about the famous people. Identification is scored quantitatively on a 3-point scale, and question responses are scored correct (1) or incorrect (0). Mean scores for the PWSA and control groups were 54.6 and 95.2, respectively. FPP and WAB-R scores were moderately correlated ( r = .67). Qualitative results describe the variety of strategies that PWSA used on the FPP. Conclusions The FPP is a way for clinicians to engage PWSA in an activity that can reveal personally relevant strategies to help PWSA communicate more effectively. The strategies can then become the basis for subsequent training on using them conversationally. Appendixes provide examples of clinical approaches.

Building on the success of the ADReSS Challenge at Inter-speech 2020, which attracted the participation of 34 teams from across the world, the ADReSSoChallenge targets three difficult automatic prediction problems of societal and medical relevance, namely: detection of Alzheimer’s Dementia, inference of cognitive testing scores, and prediction of cognitive decline. This paper presents these prediction tasks in detail, describes the datasets used, and reports the results of the baseline classification and regression models we developed for each task. A combination of acoustic and linguistic features extracted directly from audio recordings, without human intervention, yielded a baseline accuracy of 78.87% for the AD classification task, a root mean squared (RMSE) error of 5.28 for prediction of cognitive scores, and 68.75% accuracy for the cognitive decline prediction task.

Building on the success of the ADReSS Challenge at Interspeech 2020, which attracted the participation of 34 teams from across the world, the ADReSSo Challenge targets three difficult automatic prediction problems of societal and medical relevance, namely: detection of Alzheimer's Dementia, inference of cognitive testing scores, and prediction of cognitive decline. This paper presents these prediction tasks in detail, describes the datasets used, and reports the results of the baseline classification and regression models we developed for each task. A combination of acoustic and linguistic features extracted directly from audio recordings, without human intervention, yielded a baseline accuracy of 78.87% for the AD classification task, an MMSE prediction root mean squared (RMSE) error of 5.28, and 68.75% accuracy for the cognitive decline prediction task.

Purpose Analysis of spontaneous speech samples is important for determining patterns of language production in people with aphasia. To accomplish this, researchers and clinicians can use either hand coding or computer-automated methods. In a comparison of the two methods using the hand-coding NNLA (Northwestern Narrative Language Analysis) and automatic transcript analysis by CLAN (Computerized Language Analysis), Hsu and Thompson (2018) found good agreement for 32 of 51 linguistic variables. The comparison showed little difference between the two methods for coding most general (i.e., utterance length, rate of speech production), lexical, and morphological measures. However, the NNLA system coded grammatical measures (i.e., sentence and verb argument structure) that CLAN did not. Because of the importance of quantifying these aspects of language, the current study sought to implement a new, single, composite CLAN command for the full set of 51 NNLA codes and to evaluate its reliability for coding aphasic language samples. Method Eighteen manually coded NNLA transcripts from eight people with aphasia and 10 controls were converted into CHAT (Codes for the Human Analysis of Talk) files for compatibility with CLAN commands. Rules from the NNLA manual were translated into programmed rules for CLAN computation of lexical, morphological, utterance-level, sentence-level, and verb argument structure measures. Results The new C-NNLA (CLAN command to compute the full set of NNLA measures) program automatically computes 50 of the 51 NNLA measures and generates the results in a summary spreadsheet. The only measure it does not compute is the number of verb particles. Statistical tests revealed no significant difference between C-NNLA results and those generated by manual coding for 44 of the 50 measures. C-NNLA results were not comparable to manual coding for the six verb argument measures. Conclusion Clinicians and researchers can use the automatic C-NNLA to analyze important variables required for quantification of grammatical deficits in aphasia in a way that is fast, replicable, and accessible without extensive linguistic knowledge and training.

© 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Background: There is limited research on communicative recovery during the early stages after a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) in adults. Methods and procedures: In the current study 43 people with severe TBI described a simple procedure at 3 and 6 months post injury and this was compared to the description provided by 37 healthy speakers. Linguistic productivity and the presence of macrostructural discourse elements were analysed. Main outcomes and results: No change occurred in productivity in the TBI group between the two time points. There was increased use of relevant information (macrostructure) over time for the TBI group, reflecting improvement. People with TBI differed from controls in speech rate and in two out of three macrostructural categories at both time points, indicating difficulties even after 12 weeks of recovery. Conclusions: Overall, the quality, rather than the quantity of discourse was disordered for participants with TBI. Findings indicate that procedural discourse is sensitive to discourse deficits of people with TBI and can be used to map recovery during the sub-acute phase.

© 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Primary Objective: To investigate the nature and patterns of narrative discourse impairment in people with severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) during early recovery. Methods and Procedures: A single image picture description task was administered to 42 participants with severe TBI at 3 and 6-months post-injury. The same task was administered to 37 control participants. Discourse samples were analyzed with measures of productivity, informativeness and story organization. The performance of people with TBI was compared with the control group at both 3 and 6 months, and the performance of the participants with TBI was also compared across the two time points. Individual patterns of performance were also examined. Results: Inferential analyses revealed significant differences between the control group and the group with TBI on informativeness at both time points and number of complete episodes at 3 months, but no significant differences for productivity measures. There was no significant change for the group with TBI between 3 and 6 months. However, individual improvement over time was observed. Conclusions: People with TBI have discourse difficulties early post TBI that are also present at 6-months post-injury. In order to understand longer-term discourse recovery, it is necessary to examine participant patterns over further time points on this narrative task.

This work focuses on the twenty-six individuals who provided data to AphasiaBank on at least two occasions, with initial testing between 6 months and 5.8 years post-onset of aphasia. The data are archival in nature and were collected from the extensive database of aphasic discourse in AphasiaBank.The aim is to furnish data on the nature of long-term changes in both the impairment of aphasia as measured by the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised (WAB-R) and its expression in spoken discourse.AphasiaBank's demographic database was searched to discover all individuals who were tested twice at an interval of at least a year with either: 1) the AphasiaBank protocol; or 2) the AphasiaBank protocol at first testing, and the Famous People Protocol (FPP) at second testing. The Famous People Protocol is a measure developed to assess the communication strategies of individuals whose spoken language limitations preclude full participation in the AphasiaBank protocol. The 26 people with aphasia (PWA) who were identified had completed formal speech therapy before being seen for AphasiaBank. However, all were participants in aphasia centers where at least three hours of planned activities were available, in most cases, twice weekly. WAB-R Aphasia Quotient scores (AQ) were examined, and in those cases where AQ scores improved, changes were assessed on a number of measures from the AphasiaBank discourse protocol.Sixteen individuals demonstrated improved WAB-R AQ scores, defined as positive AQ change scores greater than the WAB-R AQ standard error of the mean (WAB-SEM); seven maintained their original WAB quotients, defined as AQ change scores that were not greater than the WAB-SEM; and the final three showed negative WAB-R change scores, defined as a negative WAB-R AQ change score greater than the WAB-SEM. Concurrent changes on several AphasiaBank tasks were also found, suggesting that the WAB-R improvements were noted in more natural discourse as well.These data are surprising, since conventional wisdom suggests that spontaneous improvement in language is unlikely to occur beyond one year. Long-term improvement or maintenance of early test scores, such as that shown here, has seldom been demonstrated in the absence of formal treatment. Speculations about why these PWA improved, maintained or declined in their scores are considered.

The Child Language Data Exchange System Project has developed methods for analyzing many aspects of child language development, including grammar, lexicon, discourse, gesture, phonology, and fluency. This article will describe the methods available for each of these six fields, and how they can be used for assessment in the clinical setting.

Purpose This study examined discourse characteristics of individuals with aphasia who scored at or above the 93.8 cutoff on the Aphasia Quotient subtests of the Western Aphasia Battery–Revised (WAB-R; Kertesz, 2007). They were compared with participants without aphasia and those with anomic aphasia. Method Participants were from the AphasiaBank database and included 28 participants who were not aphasic by WAB-R score (NABW), 92 participants with anomic aphasia, and 177 controls. Cinderella narratives were analyzed using the Computerized Language Analysis programs (MacWhinney, 2000). Outcome measures were words per minute, percent word errors, lexical diversity using the moving average type–token ratio (Covington, 2007b), main concept production, number of utterances, mean length of utterance, and proposition density. Results Results showed that the NABW group was significantly different from the controls on all measures except MLU and proposition density. These individuals were compared to participants without aphasia and those with anomic aphasia. Conclusion Individuals with aphasia who score above the WAB-R Aphasia Quotient cutoff demonstrate discourse impairments that warrant both treatment and special attention in the research literature.

In accord with articles 19 and 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, people with speech and language disorders have the right to receive maximal benefit from academic research on speech and language acquisition and disorders. To evaluate the diverse nature of speech and language disorders, this research must have access to large datasets, as well as to refined tools for the systematic analysis of these datasets. The TalkBank system addresses this need by providing researchers with thousands of hours of open-access database archives of digital audio, video and transcript files documenting typical and disordered language use in dozens of languages and cultures. In this paper, we review the TalkBank system, with an emphasis on the AphasiaBank, PhonBank and FluencyBank databases. We describe how specialised assessment tools can be used to study issues in speech and language acquisition and disorders recorded within these databases. We then provide illustrations of how assessments support the needs of researchers, clinicians, developers, and educators, whose combined work contributes solutions for people with speech, language and language learning disorders worldwide.

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between picture naming performance and the ability to communicate the gist, or essential elements, of a story. We also sought to determine if this relationship varied according to Western Aphasia Battery–Revised (WAB-R; Kertesz, 2007) aphasia subtype.MethodDemographic information, test scores, and transcripts of 258 individuals with aphasia completing 3 narrative tasks were retrieved from the AphasiaBank database. Narratives were subjected to a main concept analysis to determine gist production. A correlation analysis was used to investigate the relationship between naming scores and main concept production for the whole group of persons with aphasia and for WAB-R subtypes separately.ResultsWe found strong correlations between naming test scores and narrative gist production for the large sample of persons with aphasia. However, the strength of the correlations varied by WAB-R subtype.ConclusionsPicture naming may accurately predict gist production for individuals with Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia, but not for other WAB-R subtypes. Given the current reprioritization of outcome measurement, picture naming may not be an appropriate surrogate measure for functional communication for all persons with aphasia.Supplemental Materialshttps://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5851848

AphasiaBank has used a standardized protocol to collect narrative, procedural, personal, and descriptive discourse from 290 persons with aphasia, as well as 190 control participants. These data have been transcribed in the Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts (CHAT) format for analysis by the Computerized Language Analysis (CLAN) programs. Here, we review results from 45 studies based on these data that investigate aphasic productions in terms of these eight areas: discourse, grammar, lexicon, gesture, fluency, syndrome classification, social factors, and treatment effects. For each area, we also indicate how use of the CLAN programs has facilitated the analysis. We conclude with an examination of ways in which the size of the database could be increased through on-site recordings and data from teletherapy.

A distinguishing feature of Broca’s aphasia is non-fluent halting speech typically involving one to three words per utterance. Yet, despite such profound impairments, some patients can mimic audio-visual speech stimuli enabling them to produce fluent speech in real time. We call this effect ‘speech entrainment’ and reveal its neural mechanism as well as explore its usefulness as a treatment for speech production in Broca’s aphasia. In Experiment 1, 13 patients with Broca’s aphasia were tested in three conditions: (i) speech entrainment with audio-visual feedback where they attempted to mimic a speaker whose mouth was seen on an iPod screen; (ii) speech entrainment with audio-only feedback where patients mimicked heard speech; and (iii) spontaneous speech where patients spoke freely about assigned topics. The patients produced a greater variety of words using audio-visual feedback compared with audio-only feedback and spontaneous speech. No difference was found between audio-only feedback and spontaneous speech. In Experiment 2, 10 of the 13 patients included in Experiment 1 and 20 control subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging to determine the neural mechanism that supports speech entrainment. Group results with patients and controls revealed greater bilateral cortical activation for speech produced during speech entrainment compared with spontaneous speech at the junction of the anterior insula and Brodmann area 47, in Brodmann area 37, and unilaterally in the left middle temporal gyrus and the dorsal portion of Broca’s area. Probabilistic white matter tracts constructed for these regions in the normal subjects revealed a structural network connected via the corpus callosum and ventral fibres through the extreme capsule. Unilateral areas were connected via the arcuate fasciculus. In Experiment 3, all patients included in Experiment 1 participated in a 6-week treatment phase using speech entrainment to improve speech production. Behavioural and functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected before and after the treatment phase. Patients were able to produce a greater variety of words with and without speech entrainment at 1 and 6 weeks after training. Treatment-related decrease in cortical activation associated with speech entrainment was found in areas of the left posterior-inferior parietal lobe. We conclude that speech entrainment allows patients with Broca’s aphasia to double their speech output compared with spontaneous speech. Neuroimaging results suggest that speech entrainment allows patients to produce fluent speech by providing an external gating mechanism that yokes a ventral language network that encodes conceptual aspects of speech. Preliminary results suggest that training with speech entrainment improves speech production in Broca’s aphasia providing a potential therapeutic method for a disorder that has been shown to be particularly resistant to treatment. * Abbreviations : DTI : diffusion tensor imaging FSL : FMRIB Software Library

PURPOSE: This study examined responses of persons with aphasia (PWAs) to a general question about their speech. The goal was to describe their evaluative responses as positive, negative, or neutral/mixed and determine if responses differed, based on time post-onset, aphasia severity, and aphasia type. METHODS: 71 participants from the AphasiaBank project were included. As part of a larger protocol, investigators asked, "How do you think your speech is these days?" Responses were videotaped and transcribed using CLAN. Two authors coded the evaluative responses and categorized themes in the elaborative content provided by the participants. RESULTS: Positive responses accounted for 59% of all responses, followed by neutral/mixed (18%), and negative (17%). Participants also mentioned specific speech problems (35%), improvement (31%), and therapy (8%) in their responses. Time post-onset and aphasia type were not significantly associated with nature of response. Aphasia severity was significantly associated with nature of response, with higher AQ scores in the positive group and vice versa. CONCLUSIONS: The responses are discussed in the context of self-image and self-expression in PWA and social models in aphasia therapy. Results are also compared with those of others with chronic disabilities and research on resilience, positive affect, and optimism.

BACKGROUND: AphasiaBank is a computerized database of interviews between persons with aphasia (PWAs) and clinicians. By February 2011, the database had grown to include 145 PWAs and 126 controls from 12 sites across the United States. The data and related analysis programs are available free over the web. AIMS: The overall goal of AphasiaBank is the construction of a system for accumulating and sharing data on language usage by PWAs. To achieve this goal, we have developed a standard elicitation protocol and systematic automatic and manual methods for transcription, coding, and analysis. METHODS #ENTITYSTARTX00026; PROCEDURES: We present sample analyses of transcripts from the retelling of the Cinderella story. These analyses illustrate the application of our methods for the study of phonological, lexical, semantic, morphological, syntactic, temporal, prosodic, gestural, and discourse features. MAIN CONTRIBUTION: AphasiaBank will allow researchers access to a large, shared database that can facilitate hypothesis testing and increase methodological replicability, precision, and transparency. CONCLUSIONS: AphasiaBank will provide researchers with an important new tool in the study of aphasia.

Background: AphasiaBank is a collaborative project whose goal is to develop an archival database of the discourse of individuals with aphasia. Along with databases on first language acquisition, classroom discourse, second language acquisition, and other topics, it forms a component of the general TalkBank database. It uses tools from the wider system that are further adapted to the particular goal of studying language use in aphasia. Aims: The goal of this paper is to illustrate how TalkBank analytic tools can be applied to AphasiaBank data. Methods &Procedures: Both aphasic (n = 24) and non-aphasic (n = 25) participants completed a 1-hour standardised videotaped data elicitation protocol. These sessions were transcribed and tagged automatically for part of speech. One component of the larger protocol was the telling of the Cinderella story. For these narratives we compared lexical diversity across the groups and computed the top 10 nouns and verbs across both groups. We then examined the profiles for two participants in greater detail. Conclusions: Using these tools we showed that, in a story-retelling task, aphasic speakers had a marked reduction in lexical diversity and a greater use of light verbs. For example, aphasic speakers often substituted “girl” for “stepsister” and “go” for “disappear”. These findings illustrate how it is possible to use TalkBank tools to analyse AphasiaBank data.

Purpose This study evaluates how proposition density can differentiate between persons with aphasia (PWA) and individuals in a control group, as well as among subtypes of aphasia, on the basis of procedural discourse and personal narratives collected from large samples of participants. Method Participants were 195 PWA and 168 individuals in a control group from the AphasiaBank database. PWA represented 6 aphasia types on the basis of the Western Aphasia Battery–Revised (Kertesz, 2006). Narrative samples were stroke stories for PWA and illness or injury stories for individuals in the control group. Procedural samples were from the peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich task. Language samples were transcribed using Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts (MacWhinney, 2000) and analyzed using Computerized Language Analysis (MacWhinney, 2000), which automatically computes proposition density (PD) using rules developed for automatic PD measurement by the Computerized Propositional Idea Density Rater program (Brown, Snodgrass, & Covington, 2007; Covington, 2007). Results Participants in the control group scored significantly higher than PWA on both tasks. PD scores were significantly different among the aphasia types for both tasks. Pairwise comparisons for both discourse tasks revealed that PD scores for the Broca's group were significantly lower than those for all groups except Transcortical Motor. No significant quadratic or linear association between PD and severity was found. Conclusion Proposition density is differentially sensitive to aphasia type and most clearly differentiates individuals with Broca's aphasia from the other groups.

AphasiaBank is a shared, multimedia database containing videos and transcriptions of ~180 aphasic individuals and 140 nonaphasic controls performing a uniform set of discourse tasks. The language in the videos is transcribed in Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts (CHAT) format and coded for analysis with Computerized Language ANalysis (CLAN) programs, which can perform a wide variety of language analyses. The database and the CLAN programs are freely available to aphasia researchers and clinicians for educational, clinical, and scholarly uses. This article describes the database, suggests some ways in which clinicians and clinician researchers might find these materials useful, and introduces a new language analysis program, EVAL, designed to streamline the transcription and coding processes, while still producing an extensive and useful language profile.

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine word-reading ability of subjects with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD), using the National Adult Reading Test (NART). In addition to the NART, a battery of neuropsychological tests was administered to 18 AD and 20 elderly control subjects at yearly intervals over 3 years. Repeated measures analysis with grouping factors showed that the controls scored better than AD subjects on the NART at each test date and the AD subjects scored significantly worse over time. NART scores were significantly correlated with dementia severity in AD subjects at final testing only, suggesting that the NART is sensitive to dementia severity only at the later stages of the disease. Associations between the NART and other cognitive measures yielded few significant results. Finally, error responses to NART words were summarized by type and percentage for each group at each test session.

The development of the coordination of the upper lip and lower lip was investigated in children ages four, seven, and ten. Strain gauge transduction techniques were employed to monitor lip movement during the production of selected disyllables. Significant changes in lip coordination were observed between the ages of seven and ten. Results are discussed in light of current understanding of neuromuscular maturation.

The ADReSS Challenge at INTERSPEECH 2020 defines a shared task through which different approaches to the automated recognition of Alzheimer's dementia based on spontaneous speech can be compared. ADReSS provides researchers with a benchmark speech dataset which has been acoustically pre-processed and balanced in terms of age and gender, defining two cognitive assessment tasks, namely: the Alzheimer's speech classification task and the neuropsychological score regression task. In the Alzheimer's speech classification task, ADReSS challenge participants create models for classifying speech as dementia or healthy control speech. In the the neuropsychological score regression task, participants create models to predict mini-mental state examination scores. This paper describes the ADReSS Challenge in detail and presents a baseline for both tasks, including feature extraction procedures and results for classification and regression models. ADReSS aims to provide the speech and language Alzheimer's research community with a platform for comprehensive methodological comparisons. This will hopefully contribute to addressing the lack of standardisation that currently affects the field and shed light on avenues for future research and clinical applicability.