Gale Tim M, Irvine Karen, Laws Keith R, Ferrissey Sue
School of Psychology, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK.
J Clin Exp Neuropsychol. 2009 Jul;31(5):565-74. doi: 10.1080/13803390802360542. Epub 2008 Oct 29.
Controversy exists as to whether semantic disruption in Alzheimer's disease (AD) systematically impairs the naming of living things. Moreover, little is known about performance across more specific subcategories. We investigated picture naming in 28 AD patients and 24 controls. To deal with nonnormal distributions, we created 1,000 bootstrap hierarchical regressions and determined which variables (the "nuisance" variables familiarity, word frequency, age of acquisition and visual complexity; category; and control naming) best predicted AD patient naming. Nuisance variables combined, control naming, and category uniquely accounted for 39%, 36%, and 3% of patient naming variance, respectively. Finally, analysis of the AD naming profile across the 10 subcategories mirrored that of controls. Taken together, these findings indicate that while AD naming is, of course, quantitatively worse than that of controls, it does not qualitatively differ -- that is, it is an exaggerated normal profile.
关于阿尔茨海默病（AD）中的语义破坏是否会系统性地损害生物命名，目前存在争议。此外，对于更具体子类别的表现了解甚少。我们调查了28名AD患者和24名对照者的图片命名情况。为了处理非正态分布，我们创建了1000个自抽样分层回归，并确定哪些变量（“干扰”变量熟悉度、词频、习得年龄和视觉复杂度；类别；以及对照命名）最能预测AD患者的命名。综合考虑干扰变量、对照命名和类别分别独特地解释了患者命名变异的39%、36%和3%。最后，对10个子类别的AD命名概况分析反映了对照者的情况。综上所述，这些发现表明，虽然AD患者的命名在数量上当然比对照者差，但在质量上并无差异——也就是说，它是正常概况的一种夸张表现。
