Licciardo Daniele, Isella Valeria, Canu Elisa, Forestiero Marta, Castelnovo Veronica, Valsecchi Stefania, Agosta Federica, Filippi Massimo, Appollonio Ildebrando, Nestor Peter J
School of Medicine and Surgery, University of Milano-Bicocca, Monza, Italy.
Neurology Department, Fondazione IRCCS San Gerardo Dei Tintori, Monza, Italy.
J Neuropsychol. 2025 Jun;19(2):234-246. doi: 10.1111/jnp.12400. Epub 2024 Nov 14.
Surface dyslexia and dysgraphia are considered diagnostic features of semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) and are useful signs in English, a language whose attributes afford numerous opportunities to observe these phenomena. This, however, is not the case in many languages, including Italian, that have high transparency between orthography and phonology, making surface reading and spelling errors scarce. This creates a problem in applying the diagnostic recommendations for svPPA in such languages. Surface dyslexia and dysgraphia are examples of 'regularization' errors in which semantic knowledge loss leads to a failure to recognize exceptions that do not follow standard rules of pronunciation. Another form of regularization involves the incorrect inflection of irregular verbs using the rules that govern regular verbs. Unlike irregularly pronounced words, Italian, as with many languages, has numerous irregular verbs. The Italian Verb Inflection Test (IVIT) was developed to test the hypothesis that svPPA would regularize irregular verbs when inflecting them into two Italian past tenses. Results confirmed that people with svPPA made a significantly greater proportion of regularization errors compared to people with typical Alzheimer's disease or logopenic variant PPA. Without recourse to the other diagnostic features of PPA subgroups, the IVIT on its own could separate svPPA from these other two groups with 70% sensitivity and ~ 80% specificity. Regularization of irregular verb inflection offers a solution to the problem of applying the surface dyslexia/dysgraphia criterion for svPPA diagnosis in Italian.
表层失读症和书写障碍被认为是语义变异型原发性进行性失语（svPPA）的诊断特征，在英语中是有用的体征，因为英语的属性提供了大量观察这些现象的机会。然而，在包括意大利语在内的许多语言中情况并非如此，这些语言在正字法和音系学之间具有高度透明度，使得表层阅读和拼写错误很少见。这给在这些语言中应用svPPA的诊断建议带来了问题。表层失读症和书写障碍是“规则化”错误的例子，其中语义知识的丧失导致无法识别不符合标准发音规则的例外情况。另一种规则化形式涉及使用支配规则动词的规则对不规则动词进行错误的词形变化。与发音不规则的单词不同，意大利语和许多语言一样，有大量不规则动词。意大利语动词词形变化测试（IVIT）的开发是为了检验这样一种假设，即svPPA在将不规则动词变为两种意大利语过去时态时会对其进行规则化。结果证实，与典型阿尔茨海默病患者或音韵变异型PPA患者相比，svPPA患者出现规则化错误的比例显著更高。在不借助PPA亚组的其他诊断特征的情况下，仅IVIT就能以70%的敏感性和约80%的特异性将svPPA与其他两组区分开来。不规则动词词形变化的规则化解决了在意大利语中应用表层失读症/书写障碍标准进行svPPA诊断的问题。
