The Adaptation Of The Bilingual Aphasia Test In Urdu: Linguistic And Socio-Cultural Aspects

Abstract

Aphasia is an acquired neural disorder of communication, which is characterised by the symptoms on all levels of language dysfunction. The efficacy of treatment for these language impairments depends upon administering a reliable language assessment test to diagnose aphasia. Most of the aphasia batteries that researchers have developed and validated are in the English language (e.g., Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE), and Western Aphasia Battery (WAB). The only option left for clinicians to assess bilingual aphasia in Urdu speaking patients is to use the adapted version of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT). However, the test has not been standardised and normed on Urdu speaking adult individuals with aphasia. Therefore, there is a need for a standardised assessment test for diagnosing Urdu speaking patients. This study aims at adapting a test based on the BAT which is a structural and cultural adaptation to the idiosyncrasies of the Urdu language. A discussion, with Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs), lin[1]guists and clinicians from two clinical settings of Lahore, was conducted to identify the linguistic and socio-cultural issues on adapting the test. The test was adapted in Urdu utilising the exhaustive equivalence criteria mentioned in the BAT principles, after which it was administered to a sample of 60 participants to identify disparities because of transcription errors or ambiguity in pictorial or linguistic structures and unexpected socio-cultural adversity. The participants’ responses to test items failing to meet a predetermined threshold criterion were investigated and reviewed and the transcription errors found were only human errors that were resolved easily, but more complex or ambiguous items were retranslated and readapted. The standardisation process of the BAT-Urdu involved administering Part-B of the final draft of the test to the control group comprising 60 native, bilingual speakers of the Urdu language, non-brain damaged and non-psychotic, in a clinical setting. This sample was stratified by age and sex, (30 males and 30 females of which 20 participants were between age 50 and 59, another 20 participants were between age 60 and 69 and the final 20 were over 70 years of age). Thus, the first step of the BAT-Urdu standardisation involved an acceptability study, wherein all items of the test must achieve unanimous acceptance by the control group, setting the threshold criterion at 100%. The stimuli of the BAT-Urdu are in black and white and all items reached the threshold criterion, i.e., according to the participants of the control group, all items of the test are easy to understand and unambiguous.