Search

Four observers, two speech and language therapists and two others, were asked to judge a corpus of utterances obtained from a test of verbal expression in context (The Story Completion Test). The sample came from a group of people suffering from memory-related communication problems. Five hundred and sixty utterances were judged and reported: (1) Using a formula for criteria of appropriacy, utterances were compared with the target construction; (2) Overall agreement score was calculated against the clinical judgement of the assessing therapist; (3) Inter-observer variance resulted. The influence of several factors, including the manner of presentation, tester bias, shared knowledge, bridging inference and situation, are discussed. The implication of appropriate judgements in clinical contexts is considered and the question raised as to whether variance, judged more on extra-linguistic inappropriacy, can mask linguistic adequacy. The potential of bridging inference in interpreting the expressive speech, in particular in patients with dementia, is proposed.

A story completion test was constructed and administered to 99 ten-year-old boys. The main results were: (1) The average number of aggressive responses tends to be lower when the aggression items are presented in a ‘spaced’ manner than when they are ‘massed’. (2) There is a spread effect from aggression items to neutral items. Aggression and neutral items presented in mixed order give a stronger effect. (3) A relatively consistent factor structure of aggression responses was shown in the test. Aggression towards peers and authority were independent of each other, and seem to be influenced differently by the manner of presentation of stimuli.