Introducing a communication assessment tool to Brazilian speech therapists: the MAC Battery.

BACKGROUND

an assessment instrument to evaluate communication impairment after right brain damage: the Montreal Communication Evaluation Battery, an adapted brazilian version of the original canadian instrument--Protocole Montréal d'Evaluation de la Communication. Instruments that evaluate discursive, pragmatic, lexical-semantic and prosodic impairments are important for the diagnosis of communication disorders which are present in approximately 50% of the individuals with right brain damage. Systematic studies of the communication profile after lesions on this side of the brain have been carried out only during the last two decades.

AIM

to present the Montreal Communication Evaluation Battery to brazilian speech therapists.

CONCLUSION

the described instrument is an useful tool in the clinic for assessing four processes related to the communicative and linguistic abilities: discursive, pragmatic-inferential, lexical-semantic and prosodic components. It is has been normalized, validated and its reliability has been confirmed. Although this instrument was developed and adapted for diagnosing communication disorders in individuals with right brain damage people, it can also be helpful in investigating communication sequels in traumatic brain injury, dementia, bilateral frontal lesions, left-brain damage, psychopathologies, such as schizophrenia, among others.