HESP Seminar, Christos Salis (Newcastle University, UK)

Title: Standardized short-term and working memory tests in acquired aphasia: A systematic review

Abstract:
Impairments of short-term and working memory, both verbal and non-verbal, are ubiquitous in aphasia. Increasing interest in assessing short-term and working memory (STM, WM) in empirical literature and clinical practice as well as a growing evidence-base of STM/WM treatments warrant an understanding of the range of standardizes measures of STM/WM that have been utilized in aphasia. To date, no previous systematic review focused on adult non-progressive aphasia irrespective of medical aetiology. The objective of this review is to forward recommendations to researchers and clinicians about standardized STM/WM tests in aphasia. The review covered the period 2000-2015 and sourced information from 6 databases, plus other searches. It focused only on standardized tests as opposted to experimental tasks.

Results revealed that only a very small number of standardized tests, in the verbal and non-verbal domains, had robust psychometric properties. Standardization samples to elicit normative data were often small, and, in some cases, non-existent. This was also the case for validation samples of individuals with aphasia. Most measures exhibited poor validity and reliability properties. There was inconsistent documentation of important demographic and aphasic variables. These findings suggest a need to foster consistency across aphasia studies and confidence in STM/WM tests as treatment outcome measures. There is also a need to develop modern tests that reflect current theoretical developments in the understanding of STM/WM impairments and how they influence linguistic processing in aphasia.