Subject(s)
Antibodies, Monoclonal, Humanized/pharmacology , Coronavirus Infections/drug therapy , Immunologic Factors/pharmacology , Interleukin-6/antagonists & inhibitors , Neuromyelitis Optica/drug therapy , Pneumonia, Viral/drug therapy , Adult , Antibodies, Monoclonal, Humanized/administration & dosage , COVID-19 , Coronavirus Infections/prevention & control , Female , Humans , Immunologic Factors/administration & dosage , Pandemics/prevention & control , Pneumonia, Viral/prevention & control , Severity of Illness IndexABSTRACT
Semantic verbal fluency test is frequently used in clinical practice to assess lexical retrieval and production in neurological and psychiatric diseases. Semantic category is a crucial variable to consider in patients with language disorders. Norms for this task were collected from a population of 290 Italian healthy participants with age ranging from 18 to 98 years. The aim was to provide normative data both for the global score and for each semantic category (animals, fruits, brands of cars). Multiple regression analysis revealed that age and education significantly correlated with the global score and with single semantic categories. In particular, increasing age negatively affected performance, whereas the performance increased with a higher education. Statistically significant differences between men and women were found only for brands of cars. The availability of equivalent scores for the single semantic categories will prove useful in clinical practice since it allows the comparison of single semantic categories in patients with language disorders.
Subject(s)
Language Tests/standards , Semantics , Verbal Behavior/physiology , Adult , Age Factors , Aged , Aged, 80 and over , Educational Status , Female , Humans , Italy , Male , Middle Aged , Reference Values , Young AdultABSTRACT
What supports deaf signers advantage over nonsigners on visuospatial short-term memory (STM) tasks is still a matter of debate. We compared the performance of 18 deaf Italian Sign Language (LIS) users with that of a matched group of Italian hearing nonsigners in three different tasks: two versions of the Corsi Block test, namely span forward and span backward, and the Visual Pattern Test (VPT). Although the Corsi forward and backward are dynamic and mainly involve a spatial component, the VPT is static and taps primarily the visual component of STM. Signers significantly outperformed nonsigners on both versions of the Corsi Block test, whereas they performed significantly worse on the VPT. We suggest that the source of the different pattern lies in the static nature of the VPT versus the dynamic nature of the Corsi spans.
