Comparison of Main Concept and Core Lexicon Productions Between the Modern and Original Cookie Theft Stimuli in Healthy Control Participants

EasyChair Preprint 6358

Abstract

Introduction

Discourse analysis provides important insight into linguistic and cognitive function and can provide clinicians insights into functional communication abilities that standard assessments do not. Until recently, discourse analysis procedures have relied on timely transcriptions for analysis. However, recent research has established the utility of main concept analysis (MCA) and core lexicon analysis (CoreLex) in clinical language assessment. MCA compares the completeness and accuracy of story concepts to a normative sample, while CoreLex compares typicality of word choice. The current study presents the normative MCA and CoreLex checklists for the original and modern cookie theft pictures.

Conclusions 

The modern cookie theft stimulus incorporates new characters and actions and is visually richer. The instructions also differ from the original, where participants describing the modern scene are asked to talk about the picture as if describing to a person who was blind. This instruction seems to be effective in eliciting longer descriptions, made up of more main concepts and core lexical items. This work demonstrates that image complexity and task instructions impact task performance in a normative sample. MCA and CoreLex are sensitive across clinical populations and are quick, functional assessments of communicative ability. The creation of MCA and CoreLex checklists for the original and modern cookie theft images will allow researchers and clinicians to compare performance between various clinical populations as well as directly compare performances across stimuli, which is important given the extensive use of the original cookie theft for comparison to previous research.

Keyphrases: Main concepts, core lexicon, discourse, normative data

@booklet{EasyChair:6358,
  author    = {Sarah Grace Dalton and H. Isabel Hubbard and Mohammed Al Harbi and Shauna Berube and Kristen Apple and Valerie Lynch},
  title     = {Comparison of Main Concept and Core Lexicon Productions Between the Modern and Original Cookie Theft Stimuli in Healthy Control Participants},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6358},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}