Objective Breast cancer treatments bring adverse consequences that interfere with everyday functioning. Importantly, some of these treatments are associated with cognitive and language changes. Tamoxifen is a selective estrogen receptor modulator and is a common endocrine therapy treatment for breast cancer. The current review examines the specific domains of cognition and language affected by the use of tamoxifen in women with breast cancer. Methods We conducted a systematic search that examined cognitive and/or language functions in chemotherapy‐naïve women with breast cancer taking tamoxifen. PubMed, Cochrane CENTRAL, CINAHL Complete, PsycINFO, Scopus, EMBASE, and the Grey Literature Report (http://greylit.org) were searched. Covidence Systematic Review software (http://covidence.org) was used to manage the screening process of study titles and abstracts as well as full texts. A total of 17 studies were included in the review. Results A range of cognitive and language domains were reported. These were grouped into seven broad domains: attention, memory, speed, executive functioning, verbal abilities, visual abilities, and language abilities. Results showed that there is compelling evidence that specific domains of memory and speed are negatively affected by the use of tamoxifen. In addition, there was a pattern of change in domains of executive functions and verbal abilities. Conclusions Tamoxifen affects specific cognitive and language domains. Language domains beyond semantics have not been studied and thus conclusions related to these domains, and language in general, could not be made. Studies exploring the effects of tamoxifen on the different domains of language are recommended.

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The determinants of health have received substantial attention in the medical literature as recent evidence has shown that they play in vital role in general health and health-related outcomes. Despite the advancing literature, the field of communication sciences and disorders (CSD) has been slow in the both the consideration of the determinants of health as well as the measurement of commonly known determinants believed to influence clinical outcomes. The goal of this chapter is to explore the determinants of health and potential relationship to the study of communication disorders and the outcomes being measured.

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Naming difficulties are prominent and pervasive in the logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA) and are related to its underlying deficits in phonological processing. Importantly, some words appear to be more vulnerable to deterioration than others. We hypothesize that these differences can be explained, in part, by the unique psycholinguistic properties of words. Our study investigated the role of psycholinguistic properties of words, along with their underlying psycholinguistic factors, on confrontation naming performance in individuals with lvPPA. Naming accuracy data were collected from 10 individuals with lvPPA using the Boston Naming Test (BNT). For each test item, values were extracted for frequency, contextual diversity, age of acquisition (AoA), word length, phonological neighborhood density (PND), concreteness, semantic neighborhood density (SND), familiarity, arousal, and valence. We examined the effects of these psycholinguistic properties on naming accuracy using logistic regression analyses at the individual level and multiple linear regression analysis at the group level. Age of acquisition emerged as the strongest psycholinguistic predictor of naming accuracy in lvPPA at both the individual and group levels. Given that AoA and frequency are highly correlated, mediation analyses were performed to identify the relationships between AoA, frequency, and naming accuracy. The influence of AoA on naming accuracy was only partially mediated by frequency. Principal component analysis was performed to extract fundamental factors of the psycholinguistic properties. Four principal psycholinguistic factors were extracted. These were interpreted as lexical-semantic usage, phonological simplicity, semantic disembodiment, and semantic pleasantness. These factor scores were entered into multiple linear and logistic regression analyses to investigate their relative contribution to naming accuracy in lvPPA. Results indicated that lexical-semantic usage, semantic disembodiment, and semantic pleasantness predicted naming performance at the group level. Additionally, lexical-semantic usage and semantic disembodiment emerged as significant predictors at the individual level. The effects of the psycholinguistic properties and their factors and their theoretical implications are discussed in the context of phonological deficits in lvPPA and models of word naming.

Phonological impairment contributes to deficits in repetition and spoken naming in logopenic variant Primary Progressive Aphasia (lvPPA), but weakened phonology can also affect written language skills. In this experimental case report, we demonstrate phonological text agraphia in a 71-year-old woman in the early stages of lvPPA that undermined her ability to write meaningful, grammatical sentences. We investigated the therapeutic value of a rigorous treatment protocol to strengthen phonological manipulation skills coupled with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Intervention took place 5 days a week for 2 weeks with active tDCS, followed by a 2-month rest period, and then a second period of phonological treatment with sham tDCS. Over the course of treatment, our participant demonstrated improved phonological transcoding and manipulation skills as well as marked improvement in the proportion of grammatically well-formed, meaningful written narratives. Improvements in spelling and letter selection were also observed. Treatment gains were documented during phonological intervention in both active tDCS and sham treatment phases and were maintained 2 months after the conclusion of intervention. Importantly, improvements were observed in the context of a progressive disorder. These data present compelling evidence regarding the impairment-based approach that targets compromised phonological skills, presenting opportunity for improving functional written communication skills relevant to the everyday lives of individuals with lvPPA.