Dement Neurocogn Disord.  2012 Jun;11(2):53-58. 10.12779/dnd.2012.11.2.53.

A Comparison on the Naming Abilities by Modality in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease

• Kim H
• Choi H

• KMID: 2172234
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.12779/dnd.2012.11.2.53

Abstract

BACKGROUND
Impairments of language function represent patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) from the early stage and as the disease progresses the damage spreads over a much broader range of cognition and communicative functions. And, performances of the naming tasks in AD patients may reveal the gradual deterioration of their naming ability.
METHODS
In this study, naming ability was studied in patients with questionable AD (CDR 0.5, n=10), mild AD (CDR 1, n=10), moderate AD (CDR 2, n=10) and 10 healthy controls matched for age, gender and educational level using confrontation naming and naming by verbal definition tasks. The purpose of present study was 1) to investigate whether the confrontation naming and naming by verbal definition in Alzheimer's disease is different depending on the severity, 2) to examine the effects of the syllabic cue on the two naming ability for the errors questions.
RESULTS
The results from this study are as follow: 1) The two naming performances of the all AD groups were lower than those of normal people and showed significant difference. 2) There were differences between the two naming tasks, significantly lower performance on confrontation naming task than naming by verbal definition. 3) The effects of syllabic cue decreased gradually as severity progressed. 4) The effects of syllabic cue were no significant differences between the two naming tasks.
CONCLUSIONS
The results suggest that anomia in patients with AD is due to various impairment including to lexico-semantic system, visual processing, phonological processing and auditory comprehension.

Keyword

Naming; Confrontation naming; Verbal definition; Alzheimer's disease; Modality

MeSH Terms

Alzheimer Disease
Anomia
Cognition
Comprehension
Cues
Humans

Figure

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  Fig. 1 Naming performances of tasks of confrontation naming and naming by verbal definition.

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  Fig. 2 Correct ratio of confrontation naming and naming by verbal definition after syllabic cue.

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