Auditory Responsive Naming versus Visual Confrontation Naming in Dementia

Abstract

Dysnomia is typically assessed during neuropsychological evaluation through visual confrontation naming. Responsive naming to description, however, has been shown to have a more distributed representation in both fMRI and cortical stimulation studies. While naming deficits are common in dementia, the relative sensitivity of visual confrontation versus auditory responsive naming has not been directly investigated. The current study compared visual confrontation naming and auditory responsive naming in a dementia sample of mixed etiologies to examine patterns of performance across these naming tasks. A total of 50 patients with dementia of various etiologies were administered visual confrontation naming and auditory responsive naming tasks using stimuli that were matched in overall word frequency. Patients performed significantly worse on auditory responsive naming than visual confrontation naming. Additionally, patients with mixed Alzheimer's disease/vascular dementia performed more poorly on auditory responsive naming than did patients with probable Alzheimer's disease, although no group differences were seen on the visual confrontation naming task. Auditory responsive naming correlated with a larger number of neuropsychological tests of executive function than did visual confrontation naming. Auditory responsive naming appears to be more sensitive to effects of increased of lesion burden compared to visual confrontation naming. We believe that this reflects more widespread topographical distribution of auditory naming sites within the temporal lobe, but may also reflect the contributions of working memory and cognitive flexibility to performance.

Verbal Naming Test for Use with Older Adults: Development and Initial Validation

“…A delay of 10 s has been used on other established naming tests (i.e., the NAB Naming test, . We also selected 10 s over longer delays provided by other naming tasks (e.g., 20 s on the BNT) because difficulty generating names within only 2 s has been shown to be a sensitive indicator of neurological disorders such as AD and temporal lobe epilepsy (Hamberger & Seidel, 2003;Miller et al, 2010) and healthy controls and patients are able to generate names within 7-8 s on naming tasks (Bell, Seidenberg, Hermann, & Douville, 2003). Moreover, the diagnostic guidelines for dementia due to AD include "hesitations" in finding words as a symptom of AD, and taking longer than 10 s to find a word would indicate the presence of such hesitations.…”

“…Evidence suggests that a non-visual, auditory/verbal measure of word-finding may detect mild cognitive impairment and/or dementia more effectively than picture-naming tests (Hodges andPatterson, 1995, Miller, Finney, Meador, &Loring, 2010). This may be due to aspects of the functional neuroanatomy of word-finding; word-finding and semantic processing is a complex ability often mediated by several neuroanatomical correlates including lateral temporal, temporoparietal, and anterior temporal regions (Chiang et al, 2014;Grossman et al, 2004).…”

Impact of Auditory-Visual Bimodality on Lexical Retrieval in Alzheimer's Disease Patients

“…This pattern of responses, with an advantage for visual naming compared to auditory naming, is also commonly observed in AD patients [27,28]. Hilaire [28] showed that patients with dementia performed worse on auditory responsive naming than on visual confrontation naming.…”

“…Another study led by Miller et al [27] similarly demonstrated that patients with dementia had a pattern of responses in auditory naming poorer than responses in visual naming. They also highlighted that auditory naming is correlated with a large number of executive measures, more than visual naming.…”

The Auditory Naming Test Improves Diagnosis of Naming Deficits in Dementia

“…Considering both the overlap but also the very real differences in these two tests we were curious to determine if the ANT would be more revealing than the BNT for naming deficits in dementia. Indeed, research indicates that cognitively intact elderly participants (Hanna-Pladdy & Choi, 2010) and those with dementia are more likely to show impairment on auditory naming tests than on visual naming tests (Brandt et al, 2010;K. M. Miller, Finney, Meador, & Loring, 2010).…”