Abstract
The Sentence Forming Test (SFT) has been developed as a quantitative and qualitative assessment tool for the ability to formulate situationally-appropriate communicative utterances (Takahashi et al., 2007) . The present study examined whether the SFT could elicit spontaneous speech from adult aphasics. SFT and SLTA were administered to 150 aphasics. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were performed on the responses elicited in the SFT and criterion validity was assessed through correlational analysis between SFT and SLTA results. Attempts were also made to examine if aphasics can be differentiated from normal adults based on the SFT data.
The results indicated that SFT (Mean=16.75, and SD = 5.93) correlated significantly with the total scores of speech subtests in SLTA (r=0.639, p < 0.01) . The aphasics' responses were characterized by a wide range of vocabulary and various syntactic structures reflecting idiosyncrasy among subjects : such characteristics were also seen among normal speakers. The types and severity of aphasia were reflected in the types and numbers of errors in SFT except for semantic-lexical errors. The aphasics and the normal speakers in the previous study could be discriminated on the basis of the number of correct responses and time of performance in SFT.
