AphasiaBank Protocol French Marcotte Controls

Karine Marcotte
École d’orthophonie et d’audiologie
Université de Montréal
karine.marcotte@umontreal.ca

Participants:	14 controls
Type of Study:	AphasiaBank Discourse Protocol -- French
Location:	Montréal
Media type:	audio
DOI:	doi:10.21415/GWJV-KW06

Citation information

Boucher, J., Brisebois, A., Slegers, A., Courson, M., Désilets-Barnabé, M., Chouinard, A.-M., Gbeglo, V., Marcotte, K., & Brambati, S. M. (2022). Picture Description of the Western Aphasia Battery Picnic Scene: Reference Data for the French Canadian Population. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 31(1), 257–270. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00388

Brisebois, A., Brambati, S. M., Jutras, C., Rochon, E., Leonard, C., Zumbansen, A., Anglade, C., & Marcotte, K. (2023). Adaptation and Reliability of the Cinderella Story Retell Task in Canadian French Persons Without Brain Injury. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 32(6), 2871–2888. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_AJSLP-23-00101

Marcotte, K., Roy, A., Brisebois, A., Jutras, C., Leonard, C., Rochon, E., & Brambati, S. M. (2024). Reliability of the picture description task of the Western Aphasia Battery – revised in Laurentian French persons without brain injury. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 38(8), 1980–2008. https://doi.org/10.1080/13854046.2024.2340777

Brisebois, A., Brambati, S. M., Marois, É., & Marcotte, K. (2026). Core Lexicon in Laurentian French Speakers Without Brain Injury: Development, Validation, and Reliability. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 69(3), 1091–1104. https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_JSLHR-24-00713

Corpus Description: Participants without brain damage

Aim of the project: Investigate typical spoken discourse abilities in Quebec French neurotypical speakers. Examine the effect of linguistic, cognitive, sociodemographics and social cognition abilities on spoken discourse.

A group of neurotypical individuals speaking Quebec French divided in 8 age groups: 18 to 25 y.o., 26 to 35 y.o., 36 to 45 y.o., 46 to 55 y.o., 56 to 65 y.o., 66 to 75 y.o., 76 to 85 y.o., 86 y.o. and plus. All participants will be tested twice, at a six-month interval.

Discourse tasks

Personal narratives: Spontaneous Speech task from the Quick Aphasia Battery and Conversational Speech from the Montreal Évaluation de la communication (MEC).
Picture narratives: Single picture description of the picnic scene of the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised (WAB-R) and the Montreal Assessment of Connected Speech (MACS), which has been developed in Quebec. AND Sequences of picture description using the stories from AphasiaBank. * Cohesion in this later task is the most related to attention and memory.
Story retell will be assessed using the Cinderella task with visual support as well as the 101 dalmatians. *
Procedural discourse will be elicited using the ham and cheese sandwich task (cultural adaptation from AphasiaBank)* as well as with three gender neutral tasks from Sherratt and Bryan.

Other language abilities

Picture naming will be assessed using the TDQ-30, a test developed for Quebec French speakers.
Repetition will be assessed using the sentence repetition TEFREP, which has been developed following specifically French psycholinguistic properties.
Discourse comprehension scores will be obtained using the narrative discourse task from the MECand the sentence comprehension task named the Token Test.

Neuropsychological profile:

A cognitive screening test will be conducted using the MoCA.

Verbal divergent thinking will be assessed using three verbal fluency tasks from the MEC.

Nonverbal divergent thinking will be assessed using the Ruff Figural Fluency Test

Mental flexibility will be assessed using the Alphaflex and the Trail Making Test (TMT), parts A and B. Alphaflex is more recent and less widely used than the TMT, but it requires flexibility on only one sequence (the alphabet) and does not have a visual component nor a motor response.

Working memory will be assessed using the Digit Span Task from the Canadian WAIS-IV.

Short- and long-term verbal memory will be tested with the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test.

Inhibitory control will be tested using the Stroop Victoria Test.

Nonverbal intelligence will be assessed using the Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices (RCPM) of the WAB-R (to assess divergent construct).

Acknowledgements

Insight grant from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council / Conseil de recherche en sciences humaines (Canada) Grant number : 435-2022-0638 IRB Approval : CEREP-22-091-D

Usage Restrictions

Full pseudonymization