van Scherpenberg Cornelia, Fieder Nora, Savage Sharon, Nickels Lyndsey
Department of General and Typological Linguistics.
ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders.
Neuropsychology. 2019 Jan;33(1):13-34. doi: 10.1037/neu0000485. Epub 2018 Oct 4.
The progressive loss of stored knowledge about word meanings in semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) has been attributed to an amodal "storage" deficit of the semantic system. Performance consistency has been proposed to be a key characteristic of storage deficits but has not been examined in close detail and larger participant cohorts.
We assessed whether 10 people with svPPA showed consistency in picture naming across 3 closely consecutive sessions. We examined item-by-item consistency of naming accuracy and specific error types, while controlling for the effects of word-related variables such as word frequency, familiarity, and age of acquisition.
Participants were very consistent in their accurate and inaccurate responses over and above any effects of the word-related variables. Analyses of error types that compared consistency of semantic errors, correct responses, and other error types (e.g., phonologically related errors, unrelated errors) revealed lower consistency.
Our findings support the assumption that semantic features constituting semantic representations of objects are progressively lost in people with svPPA and are therefore consistently unavailable during naming. Variability in the production of error types occurs when distinctive features of an object are lost, resulting in the selection of semantically or visually similar items or in the failure to select an item and a response omission. The assessment of performance consistency sheds light on the underlying impairment of people with semantic deficits (semantic storage vs. access deficit). This can support the choice of an appropriate treatment technique to maintain or reteach semantic information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
语义变异型原发性进行性失语（svPPA）中关于词义的存储知识的逐渐丧失被归因于语义系统的一种无模态“存储”缺陷。有人提出表现一致性是存储缺陷的一个关键特征，但尚未在更详细和更大的参与者队列中进行检验。
我们评估了10名svPPA患者在连续3次紧密相连的会话中图片命名的一致性。我们在控制单词频率、熟悉度和习得年龄等与单词相关变量的影响的同时，检查了命名准确性和特定错误类型的逐项目一致性。
参与者在准确和不准确的反应方面非常一致，超过了与单词相关变量的任何影响。对语义错误、正确反应和其他错误类型（如语音相关错误、无关错误）的一致性进行比较的错误类型分析显示一致性较低。
我们的研究结果支持这样一种假设，即构成物体语义表征的语义特征在svPPA患者中逐渐丧失，因此在命名过程中始终无法获取。当物体的独特特征丧失时，错误类型的产生就会出现变化，导致选择语义或视觉上相似的项目，或者未能选择项目并出现反应遗漏。对表现一致性的评估揭示了语义缺陷患者（语义存储与提取缺陷）的潜在损伤。这可以支持选择合适的治疗技术来维持或重新教授语义信息。（PsycINFO数据库记录（c）2019美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
