Functional communication assessment for aphasic patients: A review

The article presents a review of the tests that are used for functional communication assessment of people with poststroke aphasia. Since formal language assessment has been found to be insufficient for predicting a patient’s communicative success in daily life, the focus of rehabilitation has switched to communicative skills. Based on the literature, we define four types of instruments: clinician-rated observational profiles, patient/proxy-rated observational profiles, tests that imitate everyday scenarios and tests that assess a person’s spontaneous speech during an interview, discussion on a given topic or retelling a story. Each approach has its own goals and methodology. Advantages and disadvantages of the different types of functional communication assessment are discussed