Aphasia testing: a second look at the Porch Index of Communicative Ability

It has been claimed that the Porch Index of Communicative Ability (PICA), through its multidimensional scoring system, corrects for lacks in other tests for aphasia. Specifically, the PICA is said to specify the details of the response and indicate the nature of the response; detect and describe small changes in the patient's responses; indicate the patient's level of communicative ability; and eliminate the subjectivity and bias present in descriptive methods of scoring. It is argued here that the PICA does none of these things and that the multidimensional scoring system as applied in the PICA is invalid.