ABaCo: Assessment Battery for Communication

Abstract

\ud Human communication is\ud one of the most complex social\ud activity: it is a process of meaning\ud construction which cooperatively\ud involves all participants taking\ud part in the interaction. Various\ud clinical conditions may lead to\ud impairments of communicative\ud abilities: developmental disorders\ud (e.g., autism, specific language\ud impairment, Down syndrome),\ud brain pathologies (e.g., closed\ud head injury, right hemisphere\ud damage, aphasia), psychiatric disorders\ud (schizophrenia), disorders\ud of old age (e.g. dementia). The\ud assessment of a patient’s abilities\ud and disabilities is the crucial starting\ud point for planning an efficient\ud rehabilitation path, where\ud residual capacities are strengthen\ud and, whenever possible, impaired\ud components are restored. However,\ud while the phonological,\ud syntactic and semantic components\ud of language can be assessed\ud by numerous tests, instruments\ud for the evaluation of pragmatic\ud aspects of communication are\ud scarce (see Sacco et al., 2008 for a\ud more detailed analysis of the existing\ud instruments for the assessment\ud of communication).\ud The Assessment Battery for\ud Communication (ABaCo) has\ud been created to be a theoretically\ud grounded, wide-range clinical\ud instrument. Its theoretical bases\ud stem from Cognitive Pragmatics\ud theory (Airenti, Bara & Colombetti,\ud 1993; Bara, 2010), a theory of\ud the cognitive processes underlying\ud human communicative exchanges,\ud framed within the inferential\ud model of communication (Grice,\ud 1975) and the speech acts perspective\ud (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969).\ud The theory has been shown to\ud be able to make predictions on\ud typically developing children (Bucciarelli,\ud Colle & Bara, 2003; Bosco,\ud Bucciarelli & Bara, 2004; 2006;\ud Bosco & Buciarelli, 2008; Bosco,\ud Vallana & Bucciarelli, 2012), atypically\ud developing children (Bara,\ud Bosco & Bucciarelli, 1999; Bara,\ud Bucciarelli & Colle, 2001; De\ud Marco, Colle & Bucciarelli, 2007),\ud patients with traumatic brain injury\ud (Bara, Tirassa & Zettin, 1997;\ud Bara, Cutica & Tirassa, 2001; Angeleri\ud et al., 2008), patients with right\ud and left focal brain lesions (Cutica,\ud Bucciarelli & Bara, 2006), patients\ud with Alzheimer’s disease (Bara,\ud Bucciarelli & Geminiani, 2000)\ud and patients with schizophrenia\ud (Bosco, Bono & Bara, 2012). In\ud this view, communication is the\ud ability to comprehend and produce\ud linguistic and extralinguistic\ud communication acts, accompanied\ud by suitable paralinguistic features,\ud appropriate with respect to discourse\ud and social norms, and fluently\ud integrated within the conversation.\ud The ABaCo assesses each of\ud these components, encompassing\ud the major aspects involved in communication.\ud In this paper, we will\ud briefly describe the features of the\ud battery, and summarize its psychometric\ud properties, providing some\ud suggestions for clinical application