Oral and Written Naming in Alzheimer's Disease: A Longitudinal Study
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Maria Gonzalez-Nosti1, Fernando Cuetos1, Carmen Martinez1
1University of Oviedo, Asturias, Spain, Hospital of Cabuenes, Asturias, Spain.
Background:
The expressive difficulties in patients with Alzheimer's dementia have been extensively studied, mainly in oral language. However, the deterioration of their writing processes has received much less attention.
Objective:
The present study aims to examine the decline of the performance of patients with Alzheimer's disease in both oral and written picture-naming tasks.
Method:
Sixty-four participants (half with Alzheimer's disease and half healthy elderly) were compared in the oral and written versions of a picture-naming task. Follow-up lasted two and a half years and patients were evaluated every six months.
Results:
Cross-sectional data indicate that the controls performed better than the patients, and both groups showed a different pattern of errors. In terms of longitudinal data, the results show a similar pattern of deterioration in both tasks. In terms of errors, lexical-semantics were the most numerous at the beginning and their number remained constant throughout all evaluations. In the case of non-responses, there was a significant increase in the last session, both in oral and written naming.
Conclusion:
These results replicate those found in previous studies and highlight the utility of the naming task to detect minimal changes in the evolution of patients with Alzheimer's disease.