Semantic error patterns on the Boston Naming Test in normal aging, amnestic mild cognitive impairment, and mild Alzheimer's disease: Is there semantic disruption?

Abstract

Naming difficulty is common in Alzheimer's disease (AD), but the nature of this problem is not well established. The authors investigated the presence of semantic breakdown and the pattern of general and semantic errors in patients with mild AD, patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), and normal controls by examining their spontaneous answers on the Boston Naming Test (BNT) and verifying whether they needed or were benefited by semantic and phonemic cues. The errors in spontaneous answers were classified in four mutually exclusive categories (semantic errors, visual paragnosia, phonological errors, and omission errors), and the semantic errors were further subclassified as coordinate, superordinate, and circumlocutory. Patients with aMCI performed normally on the BNT and needed fewer semantic and phonemic cues than patients with mild AD. After semantic cues, subjects with aMCI and control subjects gave more correct answers than patients with mild AD, but after phonemic cues, there was no difference between the three groups, suggesting that the low performance of patients with AD cannot be completely explained by semantic breakdown. Patterns of spontaneous naming errors and subtypes of semantic errors were similar in the three groups, with decreasing error frequency from coordinate to superordinate to circumlocutory subtypes.

A Maltese adaptation of the Boston Naming Test: A shortened version

“…Similar to the findings of other studies (e.g. Belke & Meyer, 2007;Cruice et al, 2000;Figueredo Balthazar et al, 2008) age was also found to be negatively correlated with naming score. However, age and education may not be independent of each other in cross-sectional studies.…”

“…While some studies found that ageing is negatively correlated with naming accuracy, especially over 65-70 years of age (e.g. Belke & Meyer, 2007;Figueredo Balthazar, Cendes, & Pereira Damasceno, 2008;Patricacou et al, 2007), other studies found no effect of age on performance (e.g. Allegri et al, 1997;Mansur, Radanovic, Araujo, Taquemori, & Greco, 2006).…”

Retrospective Analysis of Anesthesia in Geriatric Patients During Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography Abstract

“…Impaired language skills in aMCI patients have also been proven by similar studies performed with the same tests as those used in this study (23). The aMCI group scored lower than the control group on the Hinting Test.…”

Confrontation Naming Errors in Alzheimer's Disease

“…Nicholas et al [14 ]could not find any differences in error responses between mild-to-moderate AD patients and NC subjects. Balthazar et al [2 ]found that there were only quantitative but no qualitative differences among the semantic subtype errors of the BNT in AD patients. In contrast, Hodges et al [1 ]reported that AD patients made more semantic errors but controls used more descriptive utterances.…”

“…Researchers have proposed several different cognitive processes which might be involved in picture naming [2,3,4,5,6]. Various neuropsychological tests have been used to assess word production in AD, such as picture naming [7], naming from definitions [8], and category fluency task [9].…”