Author: Brett McCardel, MS, CCC-SLP
Alexia assessment is no simple task—there are LOTS of variables to consider that can influence reading performance, and it can be difficult to tease apart where a person’s breakdown in reading lies. When assessing alexia at the single-word level, one of the most powerful assessments out there is the 𝗔𝗿𝗶𝘇𝗼𝗻𝗮 𝗕𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 (ABRS).
The ABRS is a 100-item test that can be used for single-word reading and spelling assessment. Developed by Pelagie Beeson and colleagues at the University of Arizona, the ABRS is based on a Dual Route Cascaded Model of Reading, and helps to characterize an alexia profile through the following linguistic variables:
-Real Words vs Nonwords: some items on the ABRS are Real Words, and some are Nonwords (or made up words); ability to read real words compared to nonwords gives insight into Grapheme-Phoneme Conversion skills
-Regular vs Irregular Spelling: if a word follows conventional spelling and sound rules in English, it is considered Regularly-spelled (e.g., cat); words that have letters and sounds that do not follow conventional letter and sound rules are considered Irregularly-spelled (e.g., yacht)
-Imageability: this refers to how concrete or abstract a word is (essentially, how easy it is to develop a mental picture of the word); some words are high-imageability (e.g., jury), while others are low-imageability (e.g., justice)
-# of Letters: depending on a person’s reading difficulties, some words may be more difficult to read due to how many letters are in them
With all of these factors taken together, you can then perform error analysis to determine whether there is a Peripheral Alexia, a Central Alexia, or a combination of both!
The ABRS is 𝗙𝗥𝗘𝗘 to download from https://aphasia.sites.arizona.edu/content/8. To learn more about the Dual Cascaded Model of Reading and the different alexia profiles, check out the Archways Resources page!
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