Picture Description of the Western Aphasia Battery Picnic Scene: Reference Data for the French Canadian Population

Abstract

Purpose: The main aim of this study is to provide French Canadian reference data for quantitative measures extracted from connected speech samples elicited by the Western Aphasia Battery–Revised picnic scene, a discourse task frequently used in clinical assessment of acquired language disorders. Method: Our sample consisted of 62 healthy French Canadian adults divided in two age groups: a 50- to 69-year-old group and a 70- to 90-year-old group. Results: High interrater reliability scores were obtained for most of the variables. Most connected speech variables did not demonstrate an age effect. However, the 70- to 90-year-old group produced more repetitions than the 50- to 69-year-old group and displayed reduced communication efficiency (number of information content units per minute). Conclusion: These findings contribute to building a reference data set to analyze descriptive discourse production in clinical settings.