Evaluating a Maintenance-Based Treatment Approach to Preventing Lexical Dropout in Progressive Anomia.

Autor: Flurie M; Eleanor M. Saffran Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA.; Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA., Ungrady M; Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA., Reilly J; Eleanor M. Saffran Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA.; Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA.; Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR [J Speech Lang Hear Res] 2020 Dec 14; Vol. 63 (12), pp. 4082-4095. Date of Electronic Publication: 2020 Nov 12.
DOI: 10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00059
Abstrakt: Purpose Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and the amnestic variant of Alzheimer's disease (AD) are neurodegenerative conditions characterized by a profound loss of functional communication abilities. Communicative impairment in AD and PPA is especially apparent in the domain of naming common objects and familiar faces. We evaluated the effectiveness of a language intervention targeting maintenance of an individualized core vocabulary in a longitudinal cohort of older adults experiencing either PPA or AD. Method PPA ( n = 9) and AD ( n = 1) patients were administered a semantically based language treatment for up to 2 years. Patients repeatedly named and generated semantic features for a personalized lexicon consisting of 100 words. We evaluated naming accuracy and off-line neuropsychological measures at four successive timepoints. Naming accuracy was assessed in patients ( n = 7) who completed at least three recurrent evaluations. Off-line neuropsychological performance was assessed across timepoints in all patients. Results Patients demonstrated relative preservation of naming trained words relative to a steep decline for untrained (control) words. The greatest decrements were observed for naming people relative to objects. Conclusion These results suggest that consistent training of a finite set of words can protect a core lexicon composed of crucial target concepts (e.g., a spouse's name). We discuss potential benefits and clinical implications of maintenance-based approaches to promoting language functioning in the context of neurodegeneration.
Databáze: MEDLINE
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