Evaluating a Maintenance-Based Treatment Approach to Preventing Lexical Dropout in Progressive Anomia
| Autor: | Jamie Reilly, Molly Ungrady, Maurice Flurie |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
Linguistics and Language
medicine.medical_specialty business.industry Anomia Disease Neuropsychological Tests medicine.disease Vocabulary Language and Linguistics Semantics Primary progressive aphasia Speech and Hearing Physical medicine and rehabilitation Aphasia Primary Progressive Alzheimer Disease Functional Communication Aphasia Medicine Humans Communication skills medicine.symptom business Dropout (neural networks) Language Aged |
| Zdroj: | J Speech Lang Hear Res |
| Popis: | 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: | OpenAIRE |
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