Related Experiment Videos
Naming consistency in Alzheimer's disease
V W Henderson1, W Mack, D M Freed
1Department of Neurology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
Brain and Language
|November 1, 1990
Summary
Alzheimer's disease anomia may stem from losing word meanings, not just word recall. Consistent naming errors suggest a loss of lexical semantic information in patients.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psycholinguistics
- Geriatric Medicine
Background:
- Anomia, or word-finding difficulty, is a common symptom in Alzheimer's disease (AD).
- The precise cause of anomia in AD is debated, with theories focusing on either impaired lexical access or loss of semantic information.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether anomia in Alzheimer's disease is primarily due to lexical access or lexical semantic loss.
- To evaluate response consistency in naming tasks as a method to differentiate between these underlying mechanisms.
Main Methods:
- Nineteen patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease participated in the study.
- A visual confrontation naming task, the Boston Naming Test, was administered on two separate occasions, 6 months apart.
- Error patterns were analyzed for consistency across the two testing sessions.
Main Results:
- A high proportion (80%) of naming errors were consistent between the two testing sessions.
- Only 20% of errors were inconsistent, occurring on only one of the two occasions.
- The observed response consistency was significantly higher than what would be expected by chance.
Conclusions:
- The findings strongly support the hypothesis that lexical semantic information loss contributes to anomia in Alzheimer's disease.
- Consistent naming errors suggest a stable deficit in word meaning representation rather than fluctuating access problems.