Diagnostic Instrument for Mild Aphasia: adaptation and standardization in French A preliminary study

Abstract

The Diagnostic Instrument for Mild Aphasia (DIMA) (Satoer et al., 2019) is a valid tool developed in Dutch to evaluate the language of patients with suspected mild aphasia at production and perception levels in the most important linguistic domains: phonology, semantics and (morpho-) syntax. It was developed for pre- and postoperative use on patients with low-grade gliomas. Due to the brain tumor’s slow growth, neural networks undergo reorganization and mild gradual degradation can be observed in higher functions (Duffau, 2014). However, there is a lack of short and sensitive diagnostic instruments (Satoer et al., 2013). No such battery exists in French either (Le Rhun et al., 2009). Therefore, the purpose of this research was to adapt the Dutch battery in terms of linguistic and psycholinguistic variables into French. Two healthy French-speaking populations were compared (Belgians and French participants, total n=67) and other potential effects of demographic variables such as age, gender, level of education (and early and late bilingualism) were explored. Ceiling results in accuracy rates were registered for all tasks. Although no effect of nationality was found, there was an effect of age for most of the tasks, and education and gender also influenced performance in some tasks. Bilingualism did not affect performance. We can thus consider that the final version of the French DIMA as presented here is a valid instrument and that the standardization and clinical validation can be pursued. The application can also be extended to patients with other neurological diseases (such as strokes or traumatic brain injury) with suspected aphasia. In addition to enhancing the reliability of the protocol, creating an internationally valid battery enables more patients to be included in anatomo-clinical studies.