Picture Description Task (PDT)
Capture naturalistic speech within a structured, repeatable taskÂ
The Picture Description Task (PDT) is a test of language and communication. Participants describe a scene in their own words, generating a natural yet organized speech sample that can be analysed for a wide range of acoustic and linguistic features.Â
- Administration time: 2 minutes
Task format
Outcome measures
Recommended use
In the Picture Description Task, participants are shown a line drawing of a scene and asked to describe everything they see.
Because every participant responds to a consistent, defined visual stimulus, PDT produces highly comparable samples across participants, sites and timepoints, while still capturing natural language production.
This rich, connected speech can be used to assess speech quality as well as linguistic ability.
- Fluency — patterns in the flow and production of speech
- Lexical richness — the range and diversity of language used
- Syntactic structure — how words and sentences are constructed
- Semantic coherence — how meaning and ideas are connected
We would recommend using this test to assess cognitive function in:
Alzheimer’s disease (AD), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and psychiatry, including major depressive disorder (MDD) and schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs)
