Modelling picture naming in aphasia: The relationship between consistency and predictability of responses.

Objective: Two aspects of aphasic picture naming were examined: that is, the extent to which the accuracy of the response to the same stimulus is replicated in a successive examination, and , that is, the extent to which accuracy depends on the characteristics of each stimulus.

Methods: Thirty-eight aphasic participants were examined twice. The response pattern was the same across the 2 presentations (response stability) for 36 participants, who were classified into 3 groups according to the prevailing error-type (lexical-semantic, phonological, or a balance between the two error-types): Their item-consistency was quantified with Cohen's kappa.

Outer and inner tolerance limits: their usefulness for the construction of norms and the standardization of neuropsychological tests.

Objectives: After adjustment of scores for demographic variables, especially when test scales have an upper limit that causes a ceiling effect, the original score variability is deeply altered and the scale properties degenerate. We present a method for fixing normality thresholds on scores previously adjusted for demographic variables that overcomes these problems.

Methods: We suggest to fix norms using non-parametric tolerance limits.

The dissociability of lexical retrieval and morphosyntactic processes for nouns and verbs: A functional and anatomoclinical study.

Nouns and verbs can dissociate following brain damage, at both lexical retrieval and morphosyntactic processing levels. In order to document the range and the neural underpinnings of behavioral dissociations, twelve aphasics with disproportionate difficulty naming objects or actions were asked to apply phonologically identical morphosyntactic transformations to nouns and verbs. Two subjects with poor object naming and 2/10 with poor action naming made no morphosyntactic errors at all.

Revised and extended norms for a picture naming test sensitive to category dissociations.

This study presents revised and extended norms for a picture naming test [Laiacona et al. (Arch Neurol Psicol Psichiatr 54:209-248, 1993)], based on 80 Snodgrass and Vanderwart (J Exp Psychol Human Learn Mem 6:174-215, 1980) pictures, devised to detect a categorical dissociation in the naming of items between biological and man-made categories. This survey is based on data from 215 healthy Italian participants.

Perseveration during verbal fluency in traumatic brain injury reflects impairments in working memory.

Objective: Previous studies of verbal fluency have reported higher rates of perseverative responses in both Alzheimer's disease (AD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) relative to control groups. These perseverations could arise from a number of impairments-for example, failures in working memory, inhibitory control, or word retrieval-and different clinical populations may show an increase in perseveration because of different underlying deficits. The objective of the current report is to investigate the cause of perseveration in verbal fluency in individuals with TBI and compare those results to a recent study of individuals with AD.

Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)-Italian version: regression based norms and equivalent scores.

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is a brief cognitive screening instrument developed by Nasreddine et al. to detect mild cognitive impairment, a high-risk condition for Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. In this study we report normative data on the MoCA-Italian version, collected on a sample of 225 Italian healthy subjects ranged in age between 60 and 80 years, and in formal education from 5 to 23 years.

Language disturbances associated to insular and entorhinal damage: study of a patient affected by herpetic encephalitis.

The herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE) patient reported in this study presented a left hemisphere lesion limited to the left insula and to the left anterior parahippocampal region. The patient was followed longitudinally, focusing on the aphasia type, the language recovery, and the integrity of semantic representations. The language deficit was of fluent type, without phonological impairment, and showed a good but incomplete recovery after four months.

On which abilities are category fluency and letter fluency grounded? A confirmatory factor analysis of 53 Alzheimer's dementia patients.

Background/aims: In Alzheimer's dementia (AD), letter fluency is less impaired than category fluency. To check whether category fluency and letter fluency depend differently on semantics and attention, 53 mild AD patients were given animal and letter fluency tasks, two semantic tests (the Verbal Semantic Questionnaire and the BORB Association Match test), and two attentional tests (the Stroop Colour-Word Interference test and the Digit Cancellation test).

Methods: We conducted a LISREL confirmatory factor analysis to check the extent to which category fluency and letter fluency tasks were related to semantics and attention, viewed as latent variables.

Perceptual and response-related components of unilateral neglect may evolve independently of one another: evidence from five single-case studies.

The Milner Landmark Task allows the disentanglement of perceptual and response-related components of unilateral neglect. If these two components reflect separate functional systems, then cases should be observed in which the two components evolve differently across time. To test this hypothesis we surveyed a continuous series of 21 right hemisphere stroke patients.

The assessment of colour perception, naming and knowledge: a new test device with a case study.

Besides ocular diseases, also cerebral damage may cause colour vision deficits; cerebral lesions may be associated with a variety of clinical conditions that impair colour processing. This study presents procedures and normative data for a rapid, comprehensive seven-test battery aimed at assessing colour perception, colour naming and object colour knowledge. The norms, obtained from 96 healthy Italian participants, allow normality/pathology judgements on the basis of one-sided tolerance limits, after adjusting the score of each test for the demographic variables of the proband subjects.

Associated impairment of the categories of conspecifics and biological entities: cognitive and neuroanatomical aspects of a new case.

Case A.C.A.

Brain damage and semantic category dissociations: is the animals category easier for males?

Semantic dissociations show that biological stimuli present a further dissociation between animals and plant life. Almost all cases of greater impairment of plant life knowledge were males, suggesting a higher male familiarity with animals possibly derived from different daily activities. To verify this hypothesis, we collected familiarity ratings for normal males and females, for 288 animals, subdivided according to whether they were hunted/fished, or were used as food.

Posterior cerebral artery infarcts and semantic category dissociations: a study of 28 patients.

In this study we analysed the relationship between damage in the territory of the posterior cerebral artery and semantic knowledge, with special reference to category dissociations. Twenty-eight posterior cerebral artery stroke patients (18 left, 8 right and 2 bilateral posterior cerebral artery infarctions) completed a neuropsychological battery aimed at assessing semantic knowledge. The battery included picture naming, word-picture matching, a verbal semantic questionnaire and a picture reality decision task.

Integration of lexical and sublexical processing in the spelling of regular words: a multiple single-case study in Italian dysgraphic patients.

In this study we investigated 12 cases of "mixed dysgraphia", a spelling impairment where regular words are spelt better than either ambiguous words or regular non-words. Two explanations of mixed dysgraphia were formerly offered by Luzzatti et al. (1998): (i) a double functional lesion of the orthographic output lexicon (or damage to its access) and of the acoustic-to-phonological conversion; and (ii) some kind of interaction/summation between lexical and sublexical spelling routes when processing regular words.

Mirror asymmetry of Category and Letter fluency in traumatic brain injury and Alzheimer's patients.

In this study we contrasted the Category fluency and Letter fluency performance of 198 normal subjects, 57 Alzheimer's patients and 57 patients affected by traumatic brain injury (TBI). The aim was to check whether, besides the prevalence of Category fluency deficit often reported among Alzheimer's patients, the TBI group presented the opposite dissociation. According to some recent claims, in fact, the deficit of TBI would be equally severe for both fluency types.

Does sex influence the age of acquisition of common names? A contrast of different semantic categories.

The literature reports a sex-related asymmetry in the ability to process different semantic categories: women are more proficient with biological categories and men with man-made objects. The origin of this asymmetry is still debated. In this study, we directly checked whether the acquisition of names belonging to different semantic categories differs according to sex.

Different variables predict anomia in different subjects: a longitudinal study of two Alzheimer's patients.

Two Alzheimer's patients participated in a longitudinal study of picture naming aimed at analysing the effect of lexical frequency, age of acquisition, stimulus familiarity, word length, name imageability, visual complexity and semantic category membership on naming success. The results were analysed with a new method [Capitani, E., & Laiacona, M.

A case of impaired naming and knowledge of body parts. Are limbs a separate sub-category?

A left hemisphere stroke patient presented a disproportionate difficulty for body parts knowledge without autotopagnosia. The deficit concerned the lexical-semantic representation of body parts and was most severe for limbs. The ability to gesture was spared and action naming was not more impaired than object naming.

Objective versus estimated age of word acquisition: a study of 202 Italian children.

We provide objective data concerning the age of acquisition (AoA) of words from 202 Italian children 34-69 months of age. We investigated picture naming with 80 concrete words belonging to eight semantic categories that are included in a widely used battery for the study of naming and semantic memory. For each word, we calculated three different indices: two directly expressing the age at which a picture was given the correct name by at least 75% of the subjects, and one expressing the overall percentage of our children who were correct in the task.

Qualitative features of semantic fluency performance in mesial and lateral frontal patients.

Semantic verbal fluency is widely used in clinical and experimental studies. This task is highly sensitive to the presence of brain pathology and is frequently impaired after frontal lesions. Besides the total number of words generated, a qualitative analysis of their sequence can add valuable information about the impaired cognitive components.

Interpretation of a complex picture and its sensitivity to frontal damage: a reappraisal.

A. R. Luria introduced the interpretation of a meaningful picture as a tool for assessing pre-frontal impairment.

Animals recover but plant life knowledge is still impaired 10 years after herpetic encephalitis: the long-term follow-up of a patient.

In this study we report the long-term follow-up of EA, a patient originally affected by a disproportionate semantic impairment of biological categories due to herpetic encephalitis. After 10 years, EA still presented a biological categories semantic impairment, but his deficit had become minimal for animals while it remained considerably severe for fruit and vegetables, without any evolution from the original level of impairment. The eventual discrepancy between the two subsets of biological categories was statistically significant at word-picture matching and verbal semantic probes (and could not be explained by nuisance variables), but not significant at picture naming due to an associated lexical impairment that, besides plant life items, also affected animals and artefact stimuli.