Lexical, Semantic, and Action Verbal Fluency in Parkinson's Disease with and without Dementia

Abstract

Previous research suggests that lexical and semantic verbal fluency are differentially sensitive to the effects of cortical and subcortical dementias, but little is known about action fluency performance in dementias. The present study compared lexical, semantic, and action fluency in groups of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) with and without dementia and an elderly control group. Findings revealed an interaction between fluency type and subject group. Although the demented PD (PDD) group performed significantly more poorly than their non-demented counterparts and normal controls on all three fluency tasks, a disproportionate disparity in scores was noted on the action fluency task. The findings suggest that action fluency may be particularly sensitive to PD-associated dementia and may be an early indicator of the conversion from PD to PDD. As reported elsewhere, PD without dementia was not associated with significant impairment on any of the fluency tasks.

Language Processing in Parkinson's Disease Patients Without Dementia

“…However, analysis of spontaneous speech production of PD patients did not show the expected discrepancy between nouns and verbs, which supports the hypothesis that it is not the representation of verbs, but rather the utilization of the verb emerging under specific task demands that is troublesome (Pignatti et al, 2006). Moreover, verb fluency scores also discriminate between demented PD patients and non-demented PD patients and healthy elderly control participants, whereas tests of letter or category verbal fluency do not (Piatt et al, 1999a and1999b). Piatt et al (1999aPiatt et al ( , 1999b concluded that verb fluency was particularly sensitive to the fronto-striatal pathophysiology of PD patients with dementia.…”

“…Moreover, verb fluency scores also discriminate between demented PD patients and non-demented PD patients and healthy elderly control participants, whereas tests of letter or category verbal fluency do not (Piatt et al, 1999a and1999b). Piatt et al (1999aPiatt et al ( , 1999b concluded that verb fluency was particularly sensitive to the fronto-striatal pathophysiology of PD patients with dementia. According to these authors, verb fluency reflects the underlying integrity of frontal lobe circuitry, and problems on verbal fluency tasks could therefore indicate deficits in executive functioning.…”

“…One explanation for the discrepancy between verb and noun retrieval is that verb retrieval is more demanding than noun retrieval in terms of executive functioning (e.g., Péran et al, 2003;Piatt et al, 1999a and1999b). The idea is that retrieving the name of an object elicits a more automatic lexical retrieval response than retrieval of the action name, which demands a more controlled retrieval.…”

Neurobehavioral effects of HIV-1 infection in China and the United States: A pilot study

“…Thus, our results would support continued work to better understand the nature and causes of NP performance differences in the normal Chinese population, as well as in people affected by HIV infection and other diseases of the CNS. Neuropsychological test battery (Piatt et al, 1999;Woods et al, 2005) Letter fluency (U.S.) (Benton et al, 1994;Gladsjo et al, 1999) • (Klove, 1963;Heaton et al, 1991) Table 4 Scaled mean scores for Chinese and U.S. HIV− and HIV+ groups …”

Action verbal fluency in Parkinson’s patients

“…Examiner instructions for the action fluency test were adapted from the original author 1,5 The primary outcome was the total numbers of unique verbs generated in 60 seconds in the action verbal fluency test. The secondary variables were the total number of items in traditional fluency tests and the influence of demographic variables.…”