[Diagnosis of aphasia in clinical practice--results of a written survey].

A mail survey of clinics in the Federal Republic of Germany revealed that aphasia assessment is performed primarily by speech & language pathologists, and medical specialists. Psychologists, linguists, and speech educators, on the other hand, are involved to a much lesser degree in the process of aphasia diagnosis. Diagnosticians primarily rely on psychometric aphasia testing. Utilization of these procedures appears to be motivated by their high degree of formalization, which facilitates diagnostic objectivity, and by the good selection, syndrome classification, and severity determination this entails. Criticism is directed at the structural complexity of the tests, insufficient economy, their restricted scope, and insufficient coverage of non-language defect syndromes. Psychometric aphasia testing in many cases is used in combination with other, clinical (i.e. non-standardized) aphasia testing procedures, the advantages of the latter appearing to make up for the disadvantages in the psychometric procedures. Despite their shortcomings of not permitting adequate checks on aphasia course, use of these other procedures is held to be justified in that they are economical to administer; have a broad range of application, i.e. are useable also in acute or very severe conditions; cover non-language disorders, and, finally, are therapy-oriented. Field workers in the survey sample insist on having available both the psychometric and clinical procedures. For those involved in constructing aphasia assessment procedures, this indicates a need for developments in both "directions", which obviously are complementary to each other. Action theoretical criteria may be useful in elaborating clinical procedures.