The Quantitative Production Analysis

The Quantitative Production Analysis is a system that has been developed for the characterization of aspects of aphasic sentence production. It has been shown to yield reliable results across raters, and across samples for the same patient. The analysis system is carried out on samples of narrative speech elicited from aphasic patients in a story-telling format. The samples are systematically culled of irrelevant and/or non-propositional content according to stated criteria. The resulting "narrative" sample (of at least 150 words) is analyzed on the basis of a number of structural and morphological indices. Descriptive statistics are provided on each index for a group of 29 non-fluent aphasic patients and ten normal control patients. The training manual for this system provides a rationale for the approach along with instructions for elicitation, transcription and scoring of patients' samples. For each step of the process, audiotaped samples are provided with completed scoresheets to enhance learning of the system. Throughout the manual, numerous examples are provided to clarify the scoring criteria. A computer spreadsheet is provided that automatically calculates each of the indices from the entered data. Several publications are available in the literature that have employed the system, which can be used to quantify changes in patients' sentence construction skills after therapy or with recovery.