Dementia Care Research and Psychosocial Factors

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psycholinguistics
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Language difficulties, including naming errors, are early indicators of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.
• Current naming assessments may lack sensitivity and struggle with intercultural adaptation.
• There's a need for psycholinguistically validated, culturally relevant tools for early detection.

Purpose of the Study:

• To adapt and validate a French picture-naming and action-verb-naming task for use in non-regional Spanish.
• To ensure the adapted task is sensitive to psycholinguistic characteristics and culturally relevant.
• To improve early identification and diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases in diverse populations.

Main Methods:

• The study adapted a French naming task (part of the i-MEL.fr protocol) into Spanish.
• Psycholinguistic variables (frequency, naming agreement) were considered during adaptation.
• The adapted task, comprising 72 stimuli (48 nouns, 24 verbs), was tested on 570 noun and 415 verb participants across five Spanish regions.

Main Results:

• A detailed analysis yielded 61 equivalent stimuli (39 nouns, 20 verbs) suitable for the Spanish version.
• Eleven stimuli (9 nouns, 2 verbs) showed significant differences in frequency or naming agreement, suggesting modification.
• The adaptation process identified key psycholinguistic factors influencing stimulus equivalence.

Conclusions:

• Methodological rigor is essential for adapting neuropsychological tools across languages and cultures.
• Culturally adapted naming tasks enhance the accuracy of early neurodegenerative disease detection.
• This validated Spanish naming task will aid in understanding and diagnosing conditions in intercultural contexts.