Naming ability in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease: what changes occur with the evolution of the disease?

OBJECTIVES: Naming deficit is a linguistic symptom that appears in the initial phase of Alzheimer’s disease, but the types of naming errors and the ways in which this deficit changes over the course of the disease are unclear. We analyzed the performance of patients with Alzheimer’s disease on naming tasks during the mild and moderate phases and verified how this linguistic skill deteriorates over the course of the disease. METHODS: A reduced version of the Boston Naming Test was administered to 30 patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease, 30 patients with moderate Alzheimer’s disease and 30 healthy controls. Errors were classified as verbal semantic paraphasia, verbal phonemic paraphasia, no response (pure anomia), circumlocution, unrelated verbal paraphasia, visual errors or intrusion errors. RESULTS: The patients with moderate Alzheimer’s disease had significantly fewer correct answers than did both the control group and the group with mild Alzheimer’s disease. With regard to the pattern of errors, verbal semantic paraphasia errors were the most frequent errors in all three groups. Additionally, as the disease severity increased, there was an increase in the number of no-response errors (pure anomia). The group with moderate Alzheimer’s disease demonstrated a greater incidence of visual errors and unrelated verbal paraphasias compared with the other two groups and presented a more variable pattern of errors. CONCLUSIONS: Performance on nominative tasks worsened as the disease progressed in terms of both the quantity and the type of errors encountered. This result reflects impairment at different levels of linguistic processing. .

Naming disorders anomic aphasia.

Naming disorders, as a symptom, is always found in all aphasic patient. The patient although has a clear understanding of what he is trying to name or what he is told to write, but needs longer time or can not articulate it. Sometimes he substitutes with other words or even produces jargon words. Assessment and intervention are complicate and delicated the most important functions of the clinician. The goal of word-retrieval activities in treatment is to improve the patient's cognitive performance and to teach method to circumvent the vocabularly when needed.

Avaliação da procura de palavras no discurso de adolescentes / Assessment of word finding skills in the discourse of adolescents

BACKGROUND: Relation between the abilities of word finding and reading. AIM: Application of a word finding test to the discourse of two groups of adolescents which differed in their abilities to comprehend written texts. METHOD: Application of the Test of Word Finding Discourse in 20 participants (group 1 = 10 e group II = 10). RESULTS: There was no difference between the groups regarding the global word finding index; as for specific behaviors, word substitution was statistically significant and did differentiate the groups; as for the comparison with American standards, the use of unspecific words was statistically significant; the expected linear decrease for all of the behaviors was not observed. CONCLUSION: A linear and reciprocal relation between word finding and difficulties in reading does not exist.

Tema: relação procura de palavras e leitura. Objetivo: aplicação de um teste de procura de palavras no discurso em dois grupos de adolescentes, diferenciados pela habilidade emcompreensão de leitura. Método: aplicação do teste em 20 participantes (grupo I = 10 e grupo II = 10). Resultados: quanto ao índice global de procura de palavras, os grupos nãose diferenciaram; quanto à utilização de comportamentos específicos, a substituição de palavras foi estatisticamente significante e diferenciou os grupos estudados; quanto à comparação com o padrão americano, o comportamento utilização de palavras inespecíficas foi estatisticamente significante não houve o decréscimo linear esperado para todos oscomportamentos. Conclusão: não há uma relação linear nem recíproca entre a procura de palavras e a dificuldade de leitura.