Is Confrontation Naming Performance in Alzheimer’s Disease the Nominal Linguistic Retrogenesis of Normal Development?

Abstract

We investigated confrontation naming performance of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and normal children (NC) to see if the nature of naming performance of AD patients is the reversal of that in normal development. Sixty items of the Boston Naming Test were given to 78 AD patients (and 40 age- and education-matched normal elderly) and 1,080 NC (3- to 14-year-olds). The analyses revealed that, firstly, the naming abilities of the AD patients demonstrated an inverse relationship with those of the NC. Secondly, from the clinical point of view, AD patients tended to lose vocabulary acquired later first while maintaining those acquired in earlier stages of development. Based on the findings, we claimed that this phenomenon was ‘a nominal retrogenesis’ in which ‘retrogenesis’ is ‘the process by which degenerative mechanisms reverse the order of acquisition in normal development’ as defined by Reisberg and colleagues.

Retrogenesis of semantic knowledge: Comparative approach of acquisition and deterioration of concepts in semantic memory.

“…These results support the retrogenesis theory and are quite innovative regarding lexico-semantic aspects. Our results also agreed with those of Kim et al (2011) that highlight that AD patients lose later acquired words first in a naming task. The authors explain that phenomenon by “the consolidation process of lexical-semantic knowledge” (p. 198): words acquired earlier beneficiated from more connections with other nodes in lexico-semantic network (Steyvers & Tenenbaum, 2005), that results in solidification of the concept in the brain.…”

La habilidad léxico-semántica en la Enfermedad de Alzheimer: Un estudio de la fluidez verbal con categorías semánticas

“…En la investigación más reciente sobre el lenguaje en EA, se ha venido sosteniendo la hipótesis sobre la involución lingüística asociada a la demencia que, al menos a nivel léxico-semántico, toma forma de retrogénesis, que replica los estadíos de adquisición del lenguaje a la inversa (Simoes Loureiro & Lefebvre, 2016). La denominación en concreto da lugar a la retrogénesis nominal, que se manifiesta primeramente en la pérdida de conceptos y unidades léxicas adquiridas de forma tardía (Kim, Yoon, Lee, Baek, Sohn & Na, 2011). Parece importante añadir que, además de la edad de adquisición del léxico -una variable con incidencia predecible en el mantenimiento de redes semánticas-la composición del repertorio léxico-semántico accesible depende sustancialmente de la frecuencia de uso de las unidades que lo compongan.…”

Orthographic Knowledge of Hangul Syllable in Alzheimer’s Disease

“…Retrogenesis can be defined as the process by which degenerative mechanisms mirror the inverse sequences of the maturation process of normal development (Reisberg et al, 2002). Kim et al (2011) observed that AD patients tend to first lose words learned more recently while maintaining those learned during earlier stages of development.…”

“…From the aspect of retrogenesis (Kim et al, 2011;Reisberg et al, 2002), early acquired orthographic knowledge of Hangul grapheme/syllable might be at least partially, if not totally, remained in the minds of Korean AD patients even though they lack abilities to read and write. However, impairment of the basic knowledge of language, as writing ability is finally disrupted, might be also detected in the terminal stage of AD.…”