Short Version of the Bilingual Aphasia Test in Malayalam

Brain damage can impair the use of all languages in bilingual persons. For effective management of aphasia (i.e., impaired language) in such persons, assessment of all languages is essential. The most widely used test for this purpose - the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) - is cumbersome and requires a considerable amount of time for administration. To overcome this limitation, a short version of the BAT has been recommended.

The objective of this study was to derive a short version of BAT for Malayalam-English bilingual persons with aphasia and to establish the test-retest reliability as well as the content and construct validities of this version.

Following the recommendations of the test developers, we used seven subtests from the draft of an adapted full version of Malayalam BAT. These subtests in Malayalam and their counterparts in English were administered on a group of 22 Malayalam-English bilingual participants with aphasia. The scores obtained from these two languages were used to establish content and construct validities of the short version of the BAT in Malayalam. Further, we readministered the short version of BAT in a group of ten participants with aphasia to examine the test-retest reliability within 14 days from the date of first administration.

The short version of BAT in Malayalam revealed high test-retest reliability as well as content and construct validities. The administration time ranged between 30 and 45 min.

Thus, the short version of the BAT in Malayalam can be considered a valid and reliable language test that can be quickly administered in Malayalam-English bilingual persons with aphasia.