408 Caring to Communicate

Judging appropriacy: the implication of inter-observer variance

SANDRA WALKER The Victoria Infirmary NHS Trust, Glasgow, UK

ABSTRACT Four obseruers, two speech and language therapists and two others, were asked to judge a corpus of utterances obtained from a test of uerbal expres- sion 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) Ouerall agreement score was calculated against the clinical judgement of the assessing therapist; (3) Inter-observer uariance resulted. The influence of seueral factors, in- cluding the manner of presentation, tester bias, shared knowledge, bridging infer- ence and situation, are discussed. The implication of appropriate judgements in clinical contexts is considered and the question raised as to whether uariance, judged more on extra-linguistic inappropriacy, can mask linguistic adequacy. The poten- tial of bridging inference in interpreting the expressive speech, in particular in patients with dementia, is proposed.