Battery for Assessment of Plural Processing in Aphasia (Regularity)

(BAPPA-R)

Summary

The Battery for Assessment of Plural Processing in Aphasia (Regularity) assesses the ability of people with aphasia to produce plurals, and the effects of regularity on this ability. Some people with aphasia make errors in their use of the plural inflection, perhaps producing a singular (e.g. two horse) when a plural is appropriate or vice versa (e.g. one horses), or use alternative ways to indicate number (e.g. horse, two of them). This test battery examines whether an individual with aphasia's ability to correctly produce plurals varies depending on the regularity of a plural. For instance, some speakers may find it harder to produce an irregular plural (e.g. feet) compared to a regular plural (e.g. kings), while others may show the reverse pattern.

The BAPPA-R consists of four tests: (A) Picture Naming, (B) Reading Aloud, (C) Repetition and (D) Word-Picture Verification. You can download pdf versions of each test by clicking on the buttons on the right of this page. You can also download a pdf that gives you further detail on the BAPPA-R including detail on test interpretation and background information about how the tests were developed (BAPPA-R Manual.pdf).

(A) The Picture Naming Test contains pictures of single objects (e.g. helmet) and multiple objects (e.g. helmets) that a person has to name. Poor performance in the Picture Naming Test can be due to different types of deficits: (i) a phonological word form level deficit, (ii) a phonological buffer/phoneme level deficit, (iii) an articulatory deficit, or (iv) a semantic or conceptual deficit.

(B) The Reading Aloud Test involves reading singular and plural words aloud.

(C) The Repetition Test involves listening and repeating singular and plural words. The reading and repetition tasks are used to help localise the level of impairment that leads to any problem with plurals in the naming task, and are used to test peripheral processes, rather than central lexical processes.

(D) The Word-Picture Verification Tests involves matching written singular and plural words with pictures. If a person performs poorly on the Word-picture Verification Test then this indicates that the participant suffers from impaired plural comprehension as a result of impaired orthographic or semantic/conceptual processes, and can help localise any impairment on the naming task.

Biedermann, Beyersmann, Mason, Hameau & Nickels (2014)