Verb confrontation naming and word-picture matching in Alzheimer's disease.

Abstract

Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) were asked to name pictures and perform a multiplechoice word-picture matching task with verbs and nouns. AD patients were significantly more impaired with verbs than nouns for both naming and word-picture matching, and their patterns of semantic naming errors differed for verbs and nouns. One subgroup of AD patients was compromised on both naming and word-picture matching consistent with a semantic memory deficit. Naming was worse for verbs than for nouns in these patients, and they produced significantly fewer hierarchically related semantic substitutions for verbs than for nouns. Other AD patients without semantic memory difficulty did not demonstrate these form class-sensitive patterns. The investigators hypothesize that form class-specific effects in AD patients' naming are due in part to differences in processing verbs and nouns in semantic memory.

Verb acquisition and representation in Alzheimer's disease

“…One factor concerns the increased resource demands that may be associated with processing all of the knowledge represented in a verb. Although difficulty with verb confrontation naming and verb-picture matching do not correlate with executive resource deficits in AD White-Devine et al, 1996), we cannot rule out that the need to maintain a rich corpus of semantic, thematic, and grammatical knowledge in mind during verb processing may overwhelm AD patients who may have a material-specific limitation of executive resources. Another factor spotlights the potential role that AD patients' impaired thematic matrix knowledge may play in compromised verb meaning.…”

“…Some work demonstrates that verb meaning is particularly impaired in AD White-Devine et al, 1996;Yi et al, 2006), although others report less impairment for verbs (Fung et al, 2001;Robinson et al, 1999). Several factors may contribute to AD patients' difficulty learning the meaning of a new verb.…”

“…There are several consequences of this kind of difference. A well organized hierarchical structure appears to provide strong support for compensatory mechanisms as a distributed network for noun meaning degrades during the course of the disease (Rogers et al, 2004), but similar compensation may not be as available to support processing of verbs White-Devine et al, 1996;Yi et al, 2006). Secondly, a verb represents many different types of linguistic information.…”

Verb Retrieval in Brain-Damaged Subjects: 1. Analysis of Stimulus, Lexical, and Conceptual Factors

“…However, verb disorders are not restricted to agrammatic subjects. A number of studies have documented selective verb retrieval impairments in subjects who do not exhibit the symptoms of agrammatism (e.g., Caramazza & Hillis, 1991;Kremin, 1994;Marshall et al, 1996;White-Devine et al, 1996;Jonkers & Bastiaanse, 1998), and in fact, verb disorders have been found across many subtypes of aphasia (Williams & Canter, 1987;Kohn et al, 1989).…”

Verb Retrieval in Brain-Damaged Subjects: 2. Analysis of Errors

“…Within the past few years, an increasing amount of research has been done on verb retrieval impairments in brain-damaged subjects (McCarthy & Warrington, 1985;Williams & Canter, 1987;Kohn et al, 1989;Zingeser & Berndt, 1990;Damasio & Tranel, 1993;Daniele et al, 1994;Kremin, 1994;Breedin & Martin, 1996;Marshall et al, 1996;White-Devine et al, 1996;Berndt et al, 1997aBerndt et al, , 1997bBreedin et al, 1998;Chen & Bates, 1998;Jonkers & Bastiaanse, 1998;Tranel et al, submitted for publication). In a recent study, we investigated the degree to which various stimulus, lexical, and conceptual factors influenced the ability of 53 brain-damaged subjects to name static pictures of actions with the most appropriate verbs (Kemmerer & Tranel, 2000).…”