Pictures are often used in studies on memory, perception, and language; normative data are thus needed for such visual stimuli. In the present study, we aimed to obtain normative data for a set of 272 black-and-white pictures from middle-aged and elderly Persian speakers. A total of 206 volunteers were divided into two groups: a middle-aged (40-59 years old) group and an elderly (60 years old and over) group. The groups had similar characteristics in terms of education. Norms for every picture were developed to provide measures of name agreement, image agreement, conceptual familiarity, age of acquisition, and visual complexity. The results revealed that all of these measures vary with age, except for conceptual familiarity.
Objectives: Anomia is one of the most common and persistent symptoms of aphasia. Although treatments of anomia usually focus on semantic and/or phonological levels, which both have been demonstrated to be effective, the relationship between the underlying functional deficit in naming and response to a particular treatment approach remains unclear. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between the effects of specific treatments (Semantic feature Analysis and Phonological Components Analysis) and their underlying functional deficit patterns within the framework of a cognitive processing model.
Methods:In an ABCB reversal control task design, four participants with aphasia were selected according to the criteria based on using a cognitive model of lexical processing. Each patient received two types of treatment. In SFA, features semantically associated to the target words were elicited from the patient, whereas in PCA treatment, the phonological components of the target words were the focus of treatment. Naming accuracy scores obtained in pretreatment baseline phase were compared to post-treatment accuracy scores. Here, both itemspecific effects and generalization of untrained items were analyzed.Results: Both SFA and PCA treatments have the potential to improve naming ability in participants; however, the treatment approach that corresponds exactly to the underlying deficit causing failure in word retrieval is more effective.Discussion: While PCA is more effective for participants with phonological impairments, SFA is more effective for participants with semantic impairments. Therefore, a direct relationship between underlying functional deficit and response to specific treatment was established for all participants.
Background: The purpose of the study was to analyze naming errors in patients with Alzheimer’s disease in comparison to healthy subjects and determine the underlying cause of naming errors in these patients. Method: In this study, we included 35 healthy elderly subjects, 23 patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease, and 23 with moderate Alzheimer’s disease. Forty-five images were used to determine the type of naming errors, and to identify the underlying cause of errors, matching an image with a written word was used. Results: Patients with Alzheimer’s disease had more naming errors compared with the group of healthy elderly, and patients with moderate Alzheimer’s disease showed a slower reaction in matching an image with a written word. Conclusion: Anomia in the initial phase of Alzheimer’s disease is due to problems in lexical retrieval; however, as the disease advances, in addition to lexical retrieval problems, conceptual knowledge causes naming problems.
Objectives: The present study aimed to develop and validate a quick repetition test using familiar and culture-based words for assessing Persian-speaking children with Speech Sound Disorders (SSDs). Methods: The study sample was divided into two groups, including 419 participants without any clinical signs of speech impairment and 36 cases with SSD. The psychometric properties of the single word quick repetition test, including reliability (inter-rater and test-retest reliability) and validity (construct, discriminant, convergent, clinical and concurrent validity) were examined. Moreover, the descriptive data for children without SSD were reported. Results: The obtained test-retest and inter-rater reliability data were satisfactory with Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC): >0.7. There was a positive correlation between the results of the quick repetition test and phonetic test, indicating the scale’s acceptable convergence validity. Using inflated beta-binomial regression, statistically significant improvement in test score was found with age (discriminant validity). Comparing the correct responses of the control and case groups (clinical validity) revealed a significant difference in responses between the study groups. Results of Bland–Altman plot suggested an acceptable agreement between quick repetition test and phonetic test (construct validity). Discussion: The Persian quick repetition test is a valid and reliable instrument facilitating the screening of speech sound abilities in 3-8-year-olds. Moreover, this test’s conciseness makes it easily applicable in clinical practice and epidemiologic investigations. Establishing descriptive data from a large sample facilitated comparing children’s speech ability to the speech development standards.
Introduction
Linguistic disorders are one of the common problems in Alzheimer’s disease, which in recent years has been considered as one of the key parameters in the diagnosis of Alzheimer (AD). Given that changes in sentence processing and working memory and the relationship between these two activities may be a diagnostic parameter in the early and preclinical stages of AD, the present study examines the comprehension and production of sentences and working memory in AD patients and healthy aged people.
Methods
Twenty-five people with mild Alzheimer’s and 25 healthy elderly people participated in the study. In this study, we used the digit span to evaluate working memory. Syntactic priming and sentence completion tasks in canonical and non-canonical conditions were used for evaluating sentence production. We administered sentence picture matching and cross-modal naming tasks to assess sentence comprehension.
Results
The results of the present study revealed that healthy elderly people and patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease have a significant difference in comprehension of relative clause sentences (P <0.05). There was no significant difference between the two groups in comprehension of simple active, simple active with noun phrase and passive sentences (P> 0.05). They had a significant difference in auditory and visual reaction time (P <0.05). Also there was a significant difference between the two groups in syntactic priming and sentence completion tasks. However, in non-canonical condition of sentence completion, the difference between the two groups was not significant (P> 0.05).
Conclusion
The results of the present study showed that the mean scores related to comprehension, production and working memory in people with mild Alzheimer’s were lower than healthy aged people, which indicate sentence processing problems at this level of the disease. People with Alzheimer have difficulty comprehending and producing complex syntactic structures and have poorer performance in tasks that required more memory demands. It seems that the processing problems of these people are due to both working memory and language problems, which are not separate from each other and both are involved in.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.