Studies in the development and breakdown of the use of names

Picture naming test through the prism of cognitive neuroscience and linguistics: adapting the test for cerebellar tumor survivors-or pouring new wine in old sacks?

A picture naming test (PNT) has long been regarded as an integral part of neuropsychological assessment. In current research and clinical practice, it serves a variety of purposes. PNTs are used to assess the severity of speech impairment in aphasia, monitor possible cognitive decline in aging patients with or without age-related neurodegenerative disorders, track language development in children and map eloquent brain areas to be spared during surgery. In research settings, picture naming tests provide an insight into the process of lexical retrieval in monolingual and bilingual speakers. However, while numerous advances have occurred in linguistics and neuroscience since the classic, most widespread PNTs were developed, few of them have found their way into test design. Consequently, despite the popularity of PNTs in clinical and research practice, their relevance and objectivity remain questionable. The present study provides an overview of literature where relevant criticisms and concerns have been expressed over the recent decades. It aims to determine whether there is a significant gap between conventional test design and the current understanding of the mechanisms underlying lexical retrieval by focusing on the parameters that have been experimentally proven to influence picture naming. We discuss here the implications of these findings for improving and facilitating test design within the picture naming paradigm. Subsequently, we highlight the importance of designing specialized tests with a particular target group in mind, so that test variables could be selected for cerebellar tumor survivors.

Lexical Anomia: Or the Case of the Missing Lexical Entries

This paper reports the case of an aphasic patient, EE, with a problem in word retrieval. He is consistently unable to produce specific lexical items, which tend to be items of low rated familiarity. His retrieval of these words is not aided by the provision of phonemic cues or extra time for word retrieval. His errors consist primarily of failures to respond, and the provision of semantic information without any attempt at the target. It is argued that this pattern of performance is consistent with the loss of specific lexical items from a phonological lexicon for speech production.

EE is shown to have no impairment in auditory recognition and comprehension of the lexical items that are unavailable for naming. This dissociation is problematic for theories that propose a single phonological lexicon for both word recognition and production, but is easily accounted for by separate input and output lexicons.

Word Frequency and Age of Acquisition as Determiners of Picture-Naming Latency

In multiple-regression analysis of picture-naming latencies from an experiment modelled on Oldfield and Wingfield's (1965), with 94 stimuli and 37 adult subjects, two word frequency measures had insignificant beta weights, while two measures estimating age at which the word was learned had highly significant weights. Objects whose names were learned early were named faster. This result may have important implications for the interpretation of studies using word frequency as a critical variable. It is suggested that word retrieval may be a one-stage process that depends upon the age at which a word was learned.

Factors Associated with Independent Meal Preparation in Aphasic Females: A Pilot Study

Ten aphasic females, all of whom ordinarily prepared their own meals, were examined in food preparation tasks to determine the relationship, if any, between communication disabilities and residual meal preparation skills. A rating scale, the Functional Meal Preparation Scale (FMPS), was developed and used in this study. Ratings obtained on the FMPS were compared with overall communication skills, specific language tasks, and Stick Construction and Three Dimensional Block Performance as indicators of some visual perceptual skills. None of the comparisons reached statistical significance. Clinical observation corroborated the lack of correspondence between homemaker skills and neurolinguistic residuals. This is an area where it appears that linguistic and certain visual perceptual processing deficits do not necessarily affect performance. Implications for modifying the rehabilitation management of aphasic home-makers are suggested.

A Novel Pupillometric Method for Indexing Word Difficulty in Individuals With and Without Aphasia

PURPOSE

Cognitive effort is a clinically important facet of linguistic processing that is often overlooked in the assessment and treatment of people with aphasia (PWA). Furthermore, there is a paucity of valid ways to index cognitive effort in PWA. The construct of cognitive effort has been indexed for decades via pupillometry (measurement of pupil dilation and constriction during a cognitive task), yet pupillometry has not been implemented in studies including PWA. In the present study, we tested a novel method for indexing cognitive effort during linguistic processing in people with and without aphasia.

METHOD

Forty control participants and 39 PWA listened to semantically easy and difficult single nouns and looked at images while their pupillary responses were monitored. Mean pupil dilation in response to easy versus difficult nouns was calculated to index cognitive effort.

RESULTS

Larger mean pupil dilation values were obtained for difficult compared with easy nouns for both groups.

CONCLUSION

Results provide preliminary evidence that pupillometry can be used to index cognitive effort during linguistic processing of single nouns in people with and without aphasia. Methods for indexing cognitive effort will be a valuable addition to existing assessment methods. Suggestions for further research are offered.

Age-of-Acquisition Effects in Pure Alexia

Pure alexia is an acquired reading disorder in which previously literate adults adopt a letter-by-letter processing strategy. Though these individuals display impaired reading, research shows that they are still able to use certain lexical information in order to facilitate visual word processing. The current experiment investigates the role that a word's age of acquisition (AoA) plays in the reading processes of an individual with pure alexia (G.J.) when other lexical variables have been controlled. Results from a sentence reading task in which eye movement patterns were recorded indicated that G.J. shows a strong effect of AoA, where late-acquired words are more difficult to process than early-acquired words. Furthermore, it was observed that the AoA effect is much greater for G.J. than for age-matched control participants. This indicates that patients with pure alexia rely heavily on intact top-down information, supporting the interactive activation model of reading.

Predictors of naming decline after dominant temporal lobectomy: age at onset of epilepsy and age of word acquisition

This study examined factors affecting object naming decline in patients who have undergone anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL) and the correlation between age of word acquisition and loss of specific object names postoperatively. The Boston Naming Test (BNT) was used to assess changes in object-naming performance in patients who underwent ATL. Correlation analyses were performed by group (dominant or nondominant ATL) on individual items from the BNT to determine if age of acquisition of object names had an effect on postoperative word loss. The influence of age at onset of seizures on naming decline was examined in the dominant ATL group. Only patients who had undergone dominant ATL experienced significant clinical and statistical declines after surgery. Among the patients who underwent dominant ATL, those with late age at onset of seizures declined significantly more than those with early-onset seizures. When individual object names were examined, age of acquisition of words predicted whether words were lost or gained after surgery.

The representation of ontological category concepts as affected by healthy aging: normative data and theoretical implications

Attributes associated with concept representations, such as familiarity, typicality, and age of acquisition, have been shown to be important influences on lexical-semantic processing. In most previous studies of healthy and pathological aging, these attributes are not equated for younger and older adults separately on the stimuli used. In this study, normative data were collected to test whether there exist any age differences in these attributes. The results demonstrate that the ratings given by younger and older adults on natural and manmade category items correlated positively. However, age differences were also apparent, whereby older adults provided higher ratings overall than younger adults. Suggestions and hypotheses are presented to explain this pattern of age differences, which relate to how category concepts may be represented by healthy younger and older adults. Also, the possible implications for these differential age ratings on lexical-semantic processing are discussed. The age differences apparent in this study demonstrate the need to consider age-appropriate normative ratings in the selection of stimuli for use in lexical-semantic processing studies of aging, and the normative data presented provide a means of equating category stimuli. The complete list of all the means is available at www.psychonomic.org/archive.

Word Finding in the Damaged Brain: Probing Marshall's Caveat

Marshall (1977) constructed a plausible simulation of "anomic" speech out of the 100 most common words in the English language. He suggested that impaired access to lower frequency vocabulary might underlie anomic word finding difficulties. But he also noted that another factor, age of acquisition, may exert an influence, with anomic patients experiencing particular difficulty with later acquired vocabulary. A review of research on word-finding in aphasia and other neuropsychological conditions suggests that Marshall (1977) may have been right on both counts, and that in many patients both frequency of use and age of acquisition influence the likelihood that a given word will be able to be accessed and used. Theoretical accounts of why the age of acquisition of words might affect their retention or loss following brain injury in adulthood are considered.

Age-of-acquisition effects in word and picture identification

Words and pictures with earlier learned labels are processed faster than words and pictures with later learned labels. This age-of-acquisition (AoA) effect has been extensively investigated in many different types of tasks. This article provides a review of these studies including picture naming, word naming, speeded word naming, word pronunciation durations, lexical decisions, eye fixation times, face recognition, and episodic memory tasks. The measurement and validity of AoA ratings is discussed, along with statistical techniques used for exploring AoA's influence. Finally, theories of AoA are outlined, and evidence for and against the various theories is presented.

Both concreteness and age-of-acquisition affect reading accuracy but only concreteness affects comprehension in a deep dyslexic patient

As concreteness correlates very highly with the age-of-acquisition (AoA) of words, we attempted to disentangle the effects of these two variables in the oral reading and comprehension performance of the deep dyslexic patient LW. The results of a multiple regression analysis of LW's reading of 217 words showed that both AoA and concreteness affect reading accuracy, with the AoA effect being most apparent for her reading of concrete words. However, concreteness and not AoA affected LW's performance in matching spoken definitions to printed words, both when the distractors were semantically unrelated and when they were related. These data are interpreted in terms of a model of reading in deep dyslexia in which concreteness affects the ease with which semantics are accessed and can activate lexical representations, and AoA affects the ease with which lexical phonology becomes available for spoken word production.

Aphasic naming in Spanish: predictors and errors

Sixteen Spanish aphasic patients named drawings of objects on three occasions. Multiple regression analyses were carried out on the naming accuracy scores. For the patient group as a whole, naming was affected by visual complexity, object familiarity, age of acquisition, and word frequency. The combination of variables predicted naming accuracy in 15 of the 16 individual patients. Age of acquisition, word frequency, and object familiarity predicted performance in the greatest number of patients, while visual complexity, imageability, animacy, and length all affected performance in at least two patients. High proportions of semantic and phonological errors to particular objects were associated with objects having early learned names while high proportions of no-response errors were associated with low familiarity and low visual complexity. It is suggested that visual complexity and object familiarity affect the ease of object recognition while word frequency affects name retrieval. Age of acquisition may affect both stages, accounting for its influence in patients with a range of different patterns of disorder.

Re-evaluating age-of-acquisition effects: are they simply cumulative-frequency effects?

The time it takes to read or produce a word is influenced by the word's age of acquisition (AoA) and its frequency (e.g. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 12 (1973) 85). Lewis (Cognition 71 (1999) B23) suggested that a parsimonious explanation would be that it is the total number of times a word has been encountered that predicts reaction times. Such a cumulative-frequency hypothesis, however, has always been rejected because the statistical effects of AoA and frequency are additive. Here, it is demonstrated mathematically that the cumulative-frequency hypothesis actually predicts such results when applied to curvilinear learning. Further, the data from four influential studies (two of which claim support for independent effects of AoA and frequency) are re-analyzed to reveal that, in fact, they are consistent with a cumulative-frequency hypothesis. The conclusion drawn is that there is no evidence with which to refute the most parsimonious of explanations, i.e. cumulative frequency can account for both frequency and AoA effects.

When does a deep dyslexic make a semantic error? The roles of age-of-acquisition, concreteness, and frequency

Semantic reading errors are the central and defining feature of deep dyslexia. This study compared the words the deep dyslexic patient LW read correctly with those she omitted and those to which she produced semantic errors in terms of their concreteness, age-of-acquisition, frequency, and length. Semantic errors were made to less concrete, later-acquired, and shorter words than were read correctly; there was no reliable effect of word frequency. More importantly, the actual semantic errors produced were later-acquired than the stimulus words, but they were not more concrete or reliably more frequent. These results implicate age-of-acquisition in the process that produces semantic errors. It is proposed that concreteness determines the specificity of the semantic system to activate a set of candidate responses and that age-of-acquisition biases the ease with which certain words can be selected from this set to be produced as reading responses.

Late acquired words in childhood are lost earlier in primary progressive aphasia

The psycholinguistic nature of the dissolution of the mental lexicon in a primary progressive aphasic patient was investigated in light of the general regression hypothesis that language dissolution is the inverse of language acquisition. Four years after onset of the symptoms, the patient scored 60% correct on a picture naming test, exhibiting some effects of lexical and sublexical age-of-acquisition, but 7 years after onset, he scored only 15% correct. While even a weak form of the regression hypothesis is not fully supported, age-of-acquisition effects seem to be preserved throughout the course of the lexical dissolution. Some implications are briefly discussed for future research.

Spared written naming of proper nouns: a case report

In this study we describe an investigation into the residual written word retrieval skills of M.E.D., a patient with a severe aphasia. M.E.D.'s performance on written naming and writing to dictation tasks showed a distinctive pattern of performance across semantic categories. The patient's ability to write the names of countries and famous people was consistently superior to her ability to write the names of objects. These results could be considered as indicative of a double dissociation in the proper nouns category, as there are already patients on record who have a selective deficit in retrieving proper nouns.

Can ECT-induced cognitive effects be altered pharmacologically?

1. A systematic review of the literature revealed twelve clinical trials that evaluated nine different drugs, and used three different conceptual models to prevent, restore or treat ECT-induced cognitive deficits. 2. This review indicated inconclusive results regarding clinical utility of any of the drugs. 3. Major factors discussed include the complexities involved in the evaluation of ECT-induced cognitive deficits, and the techniques of evaluating changes in cognitive functions. 4. Our conclusion is that future research should emphasize understanding the neural mechanisms related to ECT-induced cognitive deficits. We suggest several areas for future exploration.

Age of acquisition, not word frequency, affects object naming, not object recognition

Word frequency is widely believed to affect object naming speed, despite several studies in which it has been reported that frequency effects may be redundant upon age of acquisition. We report, first, a reanalysis of data from the study by Oldfield and Wingfield (1965), which is standardly cited as evidence for a word frequency effect in object naming; then we report two new experiments. The reanalysis of Oldfield and Wingfield shows that age of acquisition is the major determinant of naming speed, and that frequency plays no independent role when its correlation with other variables is taken into account. In Experiment 1, age of acquisition and phoneme length proved to be the primary determinants of object naming speed. Frequency, prototypicality, and imageability had no independent effect. In Experiment 2, subjects classified objects into two semantic categories (natural or man-made). Prototypicality and semantic category were the only variables to have a significant effect on reaction time, with no effect of age of acquisition, frequency, imageability, or word length. We conclude that age of acquisition, not word frequency, affects the retrieval and/or execution of object names, not the process of object recognition. The locus of this effect is discussed, along with the possibility that words learned in early childhood may be more resistant to the effects of brain injury in at least some adult aphasics than words learned somewhat later.

Referential processing: reciprocity and correlates of naming and imaging

To shed light on the referential processes that underlie mental translation between representations of objects and words, we studied the reciprocity and determinants of naming and imaging reaction times (RT). Ninety-six subjects pressed a key when they had covertly named 248 pictures or imaged to their names. Mean naming and imagery RTs for each item were correlated with one another, and with properties of names, images, and their interconnections suggested by prior research and dual coding theory. Imagery RTs correlated .56 (df = 246) with manual naming RTs and .58 with voicekey naming RTs from prior studies. A factor analysis of the RTs and of 31 item characteristics revealed 7 dimensions. Imagery and naming RTs loaded on a common referential factor that included variables related to both directions of processing (e.g., missing names and missing images). Naming RTs also loaded on a nonverbal-to-verbal factor that included such variables as number of different names, whereas imagery RTs loaded on a verbal-to-nonverbal factor that included such variables as rated consistency of imagery. The other factors were verbal familiarity, verbal complexity, nonverbal familiarity, and nonverbal complexity. The findings confirm the reciprocity of imaging and naming, and their relation to constructs associated with distinct phases of referential processing.

Why don't Broca's aphasics cue themselves? An investigation of phonemic cueing and tip of the tongue information

This study investigates whether Broca's aphasics have the information processing abilities necessary to generate and use their own phonemic cues. Twenty patients were studied; ten benefited from phonemic cues given by the therapist. Phonemic cues were most effective with the patients whose naming was most severely impaired. Six patients could indicate the initial letter of words which they could not produce; three of these patients had no knowledge of any relationship between orthography and phonology, so information about the initial letter must be orthographic and not phonological. Only two patients had any success in giving the sounds of written letters. None of the 20 patients had all three abilities needed to use their own cues: giving the first letter of the name, sounding the letter, and utilizing a phonemic cue. The possibility of relearning letter-to-sound correspondences is considered.

The operativity effect in naming: a re-analysis

According to Howard Gardner (1973), operativity, i.e. the extent to which it is possible to act with or upon an object, influences picture naming by aphasic subjects. In the present study, this influence is analysed with three purposes: (1) to replicate the Gardner's observation, (2) to avoid methodological biases and to extend the analyses, and (3) to look for alternative explanations. Sixty-four pictures corresponding to high- and low-frequency nouns rated as high or low in operativity were presented to 18 aphasic subjects. Frequency and operativity were found to significantly affect naming performance. More particularly, fewer semantic paraphasias were observed in confrontation with operative items and fewer phonemic paraphasias in the production of frequent nouns. However, the influence of operativity on the reduction of errors disappeared when age-of-acquisition and picture familiarity were introduced as co-variables. These dimensions were found to be better predictors of aphasic performance than operativity.

Factors influencing naming performance in aphasia: a review of the literature

The naming performance of aphasic patients may vary substantially, depending upon linguistic factors associated with the target words, characteristics of the referent (real or pictured), the manner in which the response is elicited, and the particular situation in which the naming response is produced. Furthermore, the specific influence of certain of these factors on naming performance appears to vary with type of aphasia. This article reviews and evaluates the literature pertaining to factors that influence adult aphasics' naming performances. Implications for future research are discussed.

The effects of single versus combined cue presentations on picture naming by aphasic adults

Research has demonstrated that the presentation of auditory and visual cues is an effective clinical procedure for improving picture naming of nonfluent aphasic speakers. The effect of combined cue presentation, however, has not been clearly demonstrated. The present study investigated the effect of single and multiple cueing techniques used with nonfluent (Broca's) aphasic patients. The subjects were divided into a minimum or maximum error group based on their performance on a picture-naming task. Printed words (in either cursive or manuscript style), initial syllables, and sentence completion cues were presented independently and in combination. Discussion is directed toward the potential clinical application of multiple cueing techniques.

Word-retrieval in aphasia: an investigation of semantic complexity

Performance of aphasic subjects in adjective recognition and production tasks in which adjectives varied in semantic feature and markedness complexity was investigated. Twelve pairs of adjectives were examined in three experimental tasks; viz., picture recognition, antonym production, and sentence completion. Subjects were eight nonfluent and eight fluent aphasics. The results indicate significant differences in performance were dependent upon semantic features, markedness, experimental tasks, and type of aphasia. The discussion related semantic complexity to cognitive processes.

[Readability of words as a function of their parts of speech in aphasics. A contribution to the definition of anomia (author's transl)]

Definitions of anomia as a symptom of aphasia have been classified into three categories. Some frequently cited experimental studies designed to establish a rank order of difficulty for parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, verbs) have been briefly evaluated. An experiment has been conducted with 18 mild adult aphasics who were required to read lists of words which were controlled with respect to length, frequency of occurrence and part of speech. The results show that the linguistic category of part of speech has a highly significant influence on readability. Nouns are easier to read than adjectives and these easier than verbs. This finding does not necessarily contradict many definitions of anomia, though it calls into question the validity of many widely accepted interpretations. The results were explained in terms of phrase structure and dependence grammars.

Wh-questions: responses by aphasic patients

The syntactic relationship between wh-questions and their answers was investigated in the speech of aphasic subjects. The subjects were twenty-two aphasic patients whose mean age was 39.7 years and whose mean severity rating on the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination was 2.63. The data revealed significant differences in the frequency of correct response among types of wh-questions and a limited set of response strategies for incorrect answers. The results are discussed in terms of language theory with implications for language assessment and remediation.

Development of naming responses to meaningful nonverbal sounds

Tests of sound and picture naming were presented to 118 children between 3 ½ and 16 yr. of age to assess perceptual development for meaningful nonverbal sounds and to compare nonverbal visual and auditory perception. Sound naming improved rapidly until the ninth year, did not differ significantly between boys and girls, and was positively correlated with the frequency of usage of the stimulus names. Virtually all children were poorer in sound naming than in picture naming. It was concluded that nonverbal visual stimuli may be more salient than nonverbal auditory stimuli in the perceptual world of children. Results were interpreted with respect to the concept of modality dominance.

Studies in speech disorder in schizophrenia

Most clinical psychiatrists would agree that many but not all schizophrenic subjects show abnormalities in the field of language. Many use neologisms, i.e. new words for old referents, and some chronic patients talk in a more or less private language which at times degenerates into a word salad. The following features have been noted in the schizophrenic's verbal productions—alliteration, condensation, over-inclusiveness and the personal distortion of the symbol-referent tie. Stuart Chase said: “The point of every discussion is to find the referent. When it is found emotional factors dissolve in mutual understanding.” Psychiatrists often assume that they have identified the referent which ties in with the symbol the patient is using, but sometimes the patient uses new symbols, as “Bill” did the other week when he astonished the other group members by announcing that he was “troubled by warpations and distressed by ignorances”.

Nominal aphasia in dementia

The clinical examination of nominal aphasia has hitherto involved relatively unstandardized procedures. Random objects are presented to patients and account taken of their success or failure in finding the correct name (Allison, 1962). Recent work by Newcombe, Oldfield and Wingfield (1965) and Rochford and Williams (1962–1965) has drawn attention to a number of important variables affecting the likelihood of a correct response occurring. Oldfield (1966) in particular has presented a model of the psychological processes involved in object naming which raises a number of important theoretical questions concerning the nature of the deficit in nominal aphasia.