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Purpose Search for reliability and validity evidence for the Montreal Communication Evaluation Brief Battery (MEC B) for adults with right brain damage. Methods Three hundred twenty-four healthy adults and 26 adults with right brain damage, aged 19-75 years, with two or more years of education were evaluated with MEC B. The MEC B Battery contains nine tasks that aim to evaluate communicative abilities as discourse, prosody, lexical-semantic and pragmatic process. Two sources of reliability evidence were used: internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) and interrater reliability. Construct validity was evaluated comparing the Montreal Communication Evaluation Battery (MEC), expanded version and MEC B tasks. Results Internal consistence was satisfactory and the interrater reliability was considered excellent, as were correlations between MEC Battery and MEC B Battery tasks. Conclusion The MEC B Battery showed satisfactory reliability and validity evidences. It can be used as outcome measure of intervention programs and assist speech therapists to plan rehabilitation programs.

Background: Socio-demographic features such as age and education are the strongest influences on cognitive and communicative performance in every culture. However, there are few neuropsychological tests adapted to Brazilian society, culture, and language, especially for evaluating the communication of individuals with right hemisphere damage.Aims: This study was designed to describe age and education effects on the communicative performance of non-brain-damaged Brazilian adults on the Brazilian Montreal Communication Evaluation Battery (MAC Battery), which was created to evaluate components of communication usually overlooked by aphasia tests.Methods & Procedures: The sample was composed of 240 adults, divided into two education and three age groups. The influence of these variables on the Brazilian MAC Battery performance was assessed.Outcomes & Results: Communicative performance is influenced by educational level. Age also partially impacts performance, but to a lesser degree, and there is an interactio...

Background: It is estimated that approximately 50% of individuals who incur right‐hemisphere damage (RHD) have subsequent communication disorders. Lexical‐semantic, discourse, prosodic, and pragmatic deficits have been reported following RHD, but the co‐occurrence of these deficits within the same individual has not yet been systematically investigated. Therefore clinical profiles of communication impairments in individuals with RHD still have to be identified and described in order to appreciate their communication impairment and provide strategies for rehabilitation. Aims: The goal of the present study was to explore the clinical profiles of communication impairments subsequent to a right hemisphere lesion. Methods and Procedures: A total of 28 French‐speaking individuals with a right‐hemisphere lesion were evaluated using the Protocole MEC (Joanette, Ska, & Cote, 2004), a normalised battery allowing the assessment of communication deficits after RHD. A hierarchical cluster analysis was used to group pa...

TEMA: um instrumento de avaliação de déficits comunicativos após lesão de hemisfério direito: Bateria Montreal de Avaliação da Comunicação, versão brasileira adaptada do instrumento original canadense Protocole Montréal d'Évaluation de la Communication. Ferramentas de avaliação dos déficits discursivos, pragmáticos, léxico-semânticos e prosódicos são necessárias para o diagnóstico dos distúrbios da comunicação presentes em aproximadamente 50% dos indivíduos lesados de hemisfério direito. O quadro comunicativo após acometimento desse lado do cérebro vem sendo estudado sistematicamente há apenas duas décadas. OBJETIVO: apresentar a Bateria Montreal de Avaliação da Comunicação aos fonoaudiólogos brasileiros. CONCLUSÃO: o instrumento apresentado mostra-se uma ferramenta clínica útil no exame das habilidades lingüísticas e comunicativas relacionadas a quatro processamentos: discursivo, pragmático-inferencial, léxico-semântico e prosódico. Está normatizado, validado e sua fidedignidade foi confirmada. Embora tenha sido construído e adaptado para o exame dos distúrbios comunicativos em pacientes lesados de hemisfério direito, também pode auxiliar na investigação de seqüelas na comunicação em quadros de traumatismo crânio-encefálico, demência, lesões frontais bilaterais, lesões de hemisfério esquerdo, psicopatologias como a esquizofrenia, entre outros. BACKGROUND: an assessment instrument to evaluate communication impairment after right brain damage: the Montreal Communication Evaluation Battery, an adapted brazilian version of the original canadian instrument - Protocole Montréal d'Évaluation de la Communication. Instruments that evaluate discursive, pragmatic, lexical-semantic and prosodic impairments are important for the diagnosis of communication disorders which are present in approximately 50% of the individuals with right brain damage. Systematic studies of the communication profile after lesions on this side of the brain have been carried out only during the last two decades. AIM: to present the Montreal Communication Evaluation Battery to brazilian speech therapists. CONCLUSION: the described instrument is an useful tool in the clinic for assessing four processes related to the communicative and linguistic abilities: discursive, pragmatic-inferential, lexical-semantic and prosodic components. It is has been normalized, validated and its reliability has been confirmed. Although this instrument was developed and adapted for diagnosing communication disorders in individuals with right brain damage people, it can also be helpful in investigating communication sequels in traumatic brain injury, dementia, bilateral frontal lesions, left-brain damage, psychopathologies, such as schizophrenia, among others.

O presente estudo tem por objetivo apresentar a adaptação do “Protocole Montréal d’Évaluation de la Communication – Protocole MEC” (Bateria Montreal de Avaliação da Comunicação – Bateria MAC) ao Português Brasileiro. Esta bateria canadense foi construída para avaliar quatro processamentos comunicativos de ativação do hemisfério direito: discursivo, pragmático-inferencial, léxico-semântico e prosódico. Participaram do estudo seis tradutores, três juízes especialistas, 54 juízes não-especialistas e 16 participantes dos estudos piloto. Os procedimentos gerais promovidos foram tradução, análise de critérios psicolingüísticos por juízes e aplicação do instrumento em estudos piloto. As tarefas Interpretação de metáforas, Discurso narrativo e Julgamento semântico exigiram um processo de adaptação mais complexo e rigoroso. Com base em critérios psicolingüísticos, realizaram-se algumas mudanças nos estímulos, com a finalidade principal de manutenção do objetivo de cada tarefa do instrumento original. Este instrumento neuropsicológico pode ser uma ferramenta de avaliação da comunicação de indivíduos com lesão de hemisfério direito, lesão frontal, traumatismo crânio-encefálico e demência. This research aims to present the adaptation of the “Protocole Montréal d’Évaluation de la Communication – Protocole MEC” (Montreal Communication Evaluation Battery – MAC Battery) to Brazilian Portuguese, in accordance with psycholinguistics criteria. MAC Battery is a Canadian instrument constructed to evaluate right hemisphere communicative and linguistic abilities, considering four processing domains: discoursive, pragmaticinferential, lexical-semantic and prosodic. The participants were six translators, three specialist judges, 54 nonspecialist judges and 16 subjects from pilot studies. Adaptation procedures included translation, judge analysis of psycholinguistics criteria and two pilot tests. Some tasks required a harder stimulus adaptation process – Metaphor interpretation, Narrative discourse and Semantic judgement – focusing a main finality: to keep each task’s objective as idealized in the original instrument. This neuropsychological test can be used to evaluate communication abilities of patients with right brail damage, frontal lesion, traumatic brain injury and dementia.

This article investigates the motivations for consonant cluster simplification through an analysis of consonant deletion in Icelandic, in clusters of three consonants created by the addition of the preterite suffix -ti/-di/-ði directly to the verb stem. It is argued that deletion is driven by perceptual factors interacting with sonority requirements. Deletion targets stops and nonstrident obstruents and its likelihood correlates with similarity in manner and place of articulation between the consonants and their adjacent segments. These two generalizations are elucidated in terms of perceptual cues, and an optimality-theoretic analysis is developed in which more perceptible consonants are protected from deletion by higher-ranked faithfulness constraints.I am grateful to Olafur Pall Jonsson and Haraldur Bernharðsson, as well as Hanna Oladottir, for patiently going through a long list of verbs with me and answering my questions. Haraldur also provided me with useful references and easy access to them. Thanks also to Michael Kenstowicz, Eirikur Rognvaldsson, and two anonymous JGL reviewers for answering questions, discussing different issues, and commenting on earlier versions of this research.