Python et al., Development and standardization of a Computerized Test of Syntactic Comprehension in French

The Computerized Test of Syntactic Comprehension in French (TICSf) was created to address the lack of standardized tests in aphasiology, especially in syntactic comprehension. The TICSf includes two parallel lists of 50 sentences presented by oral or in writing evaluating equally 5 types of syntactic structures (active, passive, relative, negative and containing a preposition). The task is a sentence-picture matching task, including an “other” response to be selected when none of the four images is appropriate, in order to reduce random guess. A lexical assessment containing the lexical items used in the syntactic assessment is also available. The TICSf has been normalized on an adult population of 152 French speakers, aged from 19 to 88 years old. The analyzes using a generalized linear mixed model (1) confirm that the syntactic comprehension is an amodal process, (2) show an effect of age after 60 years old, (3) an effect of the educational level and (4) an effect of the type of sentences, especially for relative sentences, which are more difficult to understand. Norms are provided by modality, age group, educational level and type of sentences.