Automation of the Northwestern Narrative Language Analysis System.

Purpose: Analysis of spontaneous speech samples is important for determining patterns of language production in people with aphasia. To accomplish this, researchers and clinicians can use either hand coding or computer-automated methods. In a comparison of the two methods using the handcoding NNLA (...

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Published in:Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research Vol. 63; no. 6; pp. 1835 - 1845
Main Authors: Fromm, Davida, MacWhinney, Brian, Thompson, Cynthia K.
Format: Article
Published: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Jun2020
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Jun2020
      vid: 63
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      pub: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
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        143883698
        10.1044/2020_JSLHR-19-00267
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        atl: Automation of the Northwestern Narrative Language Analysis System.
      aug:
        au:
          Fromm, Davida
          MacWhinney, Brian
          Thompson, Cynthia K.
        affil:
          Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.
          Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.
      su:
        Reliability (Personality trait)
        Storytelling
        Narration
        Linguistic analysis
        Speech processing systems
        Aphasia
        Automation
        Programming languages
        Speech evaluation
        Medical coding software
        Mann Whitney U Test
      sug:
        subj:
          Reliability (Personality trait)
          Storytelling
          Software publishers (except video game publishers)
          Software Publishers
          Narration
          Linguistic analysis
          Speech processing systems
          Aphasia
          Automation
          Programming languages
          Speech evaluation
          Medical coding software
          Mann Whitney U Test
      ab: Purpose: Analysis of spontaneous speech samples is important for determining patterns of language production in people with aphasia. To accomplish this, researchers and clinicians can use either hand coding or computer-automated methods. In a comparison of the two methods using the handcoding NNLA (Northwestern Narrative Language Analysis) and automatic transcript analysis by CLAN (Computerized Language Analysis), Hsu and Thompson (2018) found good agreement for 32 of 51 linguistic variables. The comparison showed little difference between the two methods for coding most general (i.e., utterance length, rate of speech production), lexical, and morphological measures. However, the NNLA system coded grammatical measures (i.e., sentence and verb argument structure) that CLAN did not. Because of the importance of quantifying these aspects of language, the current study sought to implement a new, single, composite CLAN command for the full set of 51 NNLA codes and to evaluate its reliability for coding aphasic language samples. Method: Eighteen manually coded NNLA transcripts from eight people with aphasia and 10 controls were converted into CHAT (Codes for the Human Analysis of Talk) files for compatibility with CLAN commands. Rules from the NNLA manual were translated into programmed rules for CLAN computation of lexical, morphological, utterancelevel, sentence-level, and verb argument structure measures. Results: The new C-NNLA (CLAN command to compute the full set of NNLA measures) program automatically computes 50 of the 51 NNLA measures and generates the results in a summary spreadsheet. The only measure it does not compute is the number of verb particles. Statistical tests revealed no significant difference between C-NNLA results and those generated by manual coding for 44 of the 50 measures. C-NNLA results were not comparable to manual coding for the six verb argument measures. Conclusion: Clinicians and researchers can use the automatic C-NNLA to analyze important variables required for quantification of grammatical deficits in aphasia in a way that is fast, replicable, and accessible without extensive linguistic knowledge and training.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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