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Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a clinical syndrome characterized by gradual loss of language skills. This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic capacity of a connected speech task for the diagnosis of PPA and its variants, to determine the main components of spontaneous speech, and to examine their neural correlates.

The presence of semantic memory dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has been widely investigated. Several studies have showed a higher degree of impairment in naming persons and objects, compared to general semantic knowledge in early stages of AD. The aim of this study was to investigate if the Famous Faces Naming Test can help to differentiate patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who will progress to AD and those who will not. A Famous Faces Naming Test was administered to 17 patients with MCI who did not convert to AD and eight patients with MCI who converted to AD 2 years later. MCI patients who converted to AD 2 years later performed significantly worse on Famous Faces Naming Test compared to MCI patients who did not convert over that time period. A neuropsychological task of semantic knowledge of famous people may be useful in the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.

Background: Reading fluency is essential for our functioning in the literate society in which we live. Reading expressiveness or prosody, along with speed and accuracy, are considered key aspects of fluent reading. Prosodic patterns may vary, not being the same in children learning to read as in adulthood. But little is known about the prosodic characteristics and reading fluency of people with neurodegenerative diseases that causes language impairment and reading difficulties, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Objective: The aim of this work was to study reading fluency in AD, considering reading speed, accuracy and reading prosody. Methods: The participants were 20 healthy elderly Spanish adults, and 20 AD patients, aged 64-88 years. An experimental text was designed, that included declarative, exclamatory, and interrogative sentences, words with different stresses and low-frequency words. The reading of the participants was recorded and analyzed using Praat software. Results: The AD group showed significantly longer reading duration, both at the syllable level and at the word and sentence level. These patients also committed more pauses between words, which were also longer, and more reading errors. The control group showed a variation of the syllabic F0 in the three types of sentences, while these variations only appeared in declarative ones in the AD group. Conclusion: The pauses, along with the slight pitch variations and the longer reading times and errors committed, compromise the reading fluency of people with AD. Assessment of this reading feature could be interesting as a possible diagnostic marker for the disease.

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a clinical syndrome including a group of neurodegenerative disorders that present with language impairment. We hypothesised that impairment in reading prosody may be present in a subgroup of patients with PPA, and particularly non-fluent PPA (nfvPPA), because of the impairment of key brain regions involved in the pathophysiology of speech dysprosody and reading observed in these patients.

Background: Although some studies suggest that writing difficulties may be one of the early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease (AD), they have been scarcely studied compared to oral language. Particularly noteworthy is the paucity of longitudinal studies that enable the observation of writing impairment as cognitive decline progresses. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the characteristics of writing in patients with AD and to monitor the deterioration of their performance over a follow-up period. Methods: Sixty-four participants (half with AD and half healthy elderly) were compared in a word and pseudo-word dictation task. Patients were evaluated every 6 months over a 2.5 year follow-up period Results: The evolution of patient performance and error profile shows a typical pattern of deterioration, with early damage to the lexical pathway, which later extends to the phonological pathway and eventually affects peripheral processes. Conclusion: These results confirm the presence of writing difficulties from the early stages of AD, supporting the value of this task for early diagnosis. Furthermore, it allows us to explain the contradictory data obtained in previous investigations.

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a clinical syndrome of neurodegenerative origin with 3 main variants: non-fluent, semantic, and logopenic. However, there is some controversy about the existence of additional subtypes. Our aim was to study the language and cognitive features associated with a new proposed classification for PPA.

Background: The expressive difficulties in patients with Alzheimer's dementia have been extensively studied, mainly in oral language. However, the deterioration of their writing processes has received much less attention. Objective: The present study aims to examine the decline of the performance of patients with Alzheimer's disease in both oral and written picture-naming tasks. Method: Sixty-four participants (half with Alzheimer's disease and half healthy elderly) were compared in the oral and written versions of a picture-naming task. Follow-up lasted two and a half years and patients were evaluated every six months. Results: Cross-sectional data indicate that the controls performed better than the patients, and both groups showed a different pattern of errors. In terms of longitudinal data, the results show a similar pattern of deterioration in both tasks. In terms of errors, lexical-semantics were the most numerous at the beginning and their number remained constant throughout all evaluations. In the case of non-responses, there was a significant increase in the last session, both in oral and written naming. Conclusion: These results replicate those found in previous studies and highlight the utility of the naming task to detect minimal changes in the evolution of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Background: Many studies suggest oxidative stress as an early feature of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). However, evidence of established oxidative stress in AD peripheral cells is still inconclusive, possibly due to both, differences in the type of samples and the heterogeneity of oxidative markers used in different studies. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate blood-based redox alterations in Alzheimer’s Disease in order to identify a peculiar disease profile. Method: To that purpose, we measured the activity of Superoxide Dismutase, Catalase and Glutathione Peroxidase both in the extracellular and the intracellular blood compartments of AD, MCI and control subjects. The amount of an open isoform of p53 protein (unfolded p53), resulting from oxidative modifications was also determined. Results: Decreased SOD, increased GPx activity and higher p53 open isoform were found in both AD and MCI plasma compared to controls. In blood peripheral mononuclear cells, SOD activity was also decreased in both AD and MCI, and unfolded p53 increased exquisitely in younger AD males compared to controls. Conclusion: Overall, these data highlight the importance of considering both extracellular and intracellular compartments, in the determination of antioxidant enzyme activities as well as specific oxidation end-products, in order to identify peculiar blood-based redox alterations in AD pathology.

La batería NEUROBEL (Evaluación neuropsicológica del lenguaje en adultos) es una prueba breve que permite una valoración de sondeo de los procesos básicos de comprensión y producción del lenguaje. Consta de 8 tareas, que analizan el correcto funcionamiento del lenguaje oral desde el modelo teórico propuesto por la neuropsicología cognitiva. El objetivo de este trabajo ha consistido en realizar un estudio piloto de los valores de referencia normativos iniciales de esta batería en adultos y mayores. Para ello, se ha estudiado una muestra de 30 participantes sin deterioro cognitivo (MMSE≥25), de ambos sexos y de más de 50 años. La batería NEUROBEL fue administrada a toda la muestra dividida en 2 grupos de edad: «adultos» (50-64) y «adultos-mayores» (>65). Estos últimos analizados también según su lugar habitual de residencia (domicilio particular o centros de mayores). En el apartado Resultados se presentan las puntuaciones, tiempos de referencia y percentiles principales obtenidos en la batería. NEUROBEL se muestra como una herramienta válida y fiable, con altas correlaciones bivariadas entre las tareas. ANOVA univariantes muestran efectos de grupo y escolaridad en puntuación, a favor de los participantes más jóvenes y escolarizados. Por el contrario, el sexo no influye en los resultados alcanzados, aunque sí se muestra como un factor significativo en el tiempo de ejecución de la batería, a favor de las mujeres. Ciertas diferencias observadas en los resultados entre los participantes del grupo de mayores de 65 años, dependiendo de su lugar habitual de residencia y sexo, se debaten en el apartado Discusión.

El objetivo de este estudio fue analizar el efecto que la intervención conciencia fonológica y velocidad de denominación tiene sobre el aprendizaje de la escritura. Los participantes fueron 271 alumnos, 138 del grupo experimental y 133 del control. Los alumnos del grupo experimental recibieron instrucción en conciencia fonológica y en velocidad de denominación a lo largo de 3 cursos y el grupo control siguió el plan curricular oficial. La instrucción se llevó a cabo con los alumnos de 2∘ de infantil, 3∘ de infantil y 1∘ de primaria, a quienes más tarde se les evaluó la escritura con una prueba estandarizada. El grupo experimental obtuvo puntuaciones significativamente más altas que el grupo control en las pruebas de conciencia fonológica y denominación rápida. Y más importante aún, obtuvo mejores puntuaciones en las tareas de escritura. Estos resultados tienen importantes implicaciones teóricas y educativas que apoyan la relación entre conciencia fonológica y velocidad de denominación en el aprendizaje de la escritura y proporcionan pautas concretas para el trabajo en el aula.

A recent voice recognition experiment conducted by Perrachione, Del Tufo, and Gabrieli (2011) revealed that, in normal adult readers, the accuracy at identifying human voices was better in the participants’ mother tongue than in an unfamiliar language, while this difference was absentin a group of adults with dyslexia. This pattern favored a view of dyslexia as due to “fundamentally impoverished native-language phonological representations.” To further examine this issue, we conducted two voice recognition experiments, one with children with/without dyslexia, and the other with adults with/without dyslexia. Results revealed that children/adults with dyslexia were less accurate at identifying voices than normal readers and, importantly, this effect was independent of language. These data are more consistent with the assumption of dyslexia as due to a deficit in multisensory integration rather than a deficit based on impoverished native-language phonologically based representations.

Semantic memory decline has been found in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). In this study performance on a range of semantic tasks and structural brain patterns were examined in a group of MCI patients. Fourteen MCI and sixteen healthy elderly controls underwent semantic memory assessment and MRI brain scanning. The cognitive battery included visual naming and naming from definition tasks for objects, actions and famous people, semantic fluency for animals, fruits, tools, furniture, singers, politicians, actions, word-association task for early and late acquired words and a reading task. MCI patients performed worse on semantic fluency in all categories except for tools, produced a smaller number of words associated with early acquired nouns and a smaller total number of word-associations. Patients scored more poorly in all tasks of naming, naming of famous people, overall reading and reading of famous peoples names. MCIs had fewer correct immediate recalls and more correct responses with cue in famous people naming, made more errors in naming and in the naming from definition task for famous people. Grey matter reduction in parahippocampus, frontal and cingulate cortices and amygdala was found in the MCI sample when compared with controls. Patients presented a different pattern of brain areas correlated with semantic tasks from that seen in controls, with more extensive involvement of subcortical regions in semantic fluency and word-association and more contribution of frontal than temporo-parietal areas in visual naming. This evidence suggests a reorganization of cortical associations of semantic processes in MCI that, following damage in the semantic circuit, explains its progressive breakdown.

The verb-specific impairment present in patients with motion-related neurological diseases has been argued to support the hypothesis that the processing of words referring to motion depends on neural activity in regions involved in motor planning and execution. We presented a group of Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients with an action-naming task in order to test whether the prevalence of motion-related semantic content in different verbs influences their accuracy.

Three series of priming experiments were conducted to probe the morphological and phonological contributions to visual word recognition in Spanish. Prefixed, e.g., INCAPAZ (incapable), and pseudoprefixed, e.g., INDUSTRIA (industry) target words were presented for recognition following a prefixed, e.g., infeliz (unhappy), or pseudoprefixed, e.g., insulto (insult), prime starting with the same syllable as the target, at masked short or long stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). At long SOAs the recognition of prefixed targets was facilitated by prefixed primes and inhibited by pseudoprefixed ones, whereas both prefixed and pseudoprefixed primes facilitated the recognition at short SOAs. In contrast, the recognition of pseudoprefixed targets was unaffected by the kind of prime presented, even when we used pairs of words overlapping in syllables that cannot be prefixes in Spanish. These results support a special status for morphological elements in access to meaning in reading.

Studies on the factors that determine word naming speed have been conducted in a number of languages. In this study two objectives were pursued: (1) to contrast the effects of the variable of age of acquisition with the different measures of frequency of use (adult written frequency, child written frequency, cumulative frequency, and frequency trajectory), and (2) to verify which variables determine reading latencies in a language with a completely transparent reading system (Spanish). For these purposes, 53 native speakers of Spanish read aloud 240 words for which values were available of the main lexical, phonological, and semantic variables. The results of the regression analyses showed that the best predictors of reading times were length (measured in terms of both number of letters and number of syllables) and subjective age of acquisition (AoA). The different frequency measures correlated significantly with the response latencies but were not longer significant in the regression analyses. Semantic variables (familiarity and imageability) had the smallest effects on reading speed. The comparison of the results obtained in this study with those reported for other languages offers some conclusions about the effects of orthographic systems on word naming.

Two experiments are reported in which naming multidigit Arabic numerals was shown to depend on the context in which the numbers were presented. Number naming and number decisions were faster after an associative prime (e.g., 747 preceded by the word Boeing) than after an unre- lated prime, both in unmasked and masked priming conditions. On the basis of these findings, we conclude that number naming is not always based on a quantity-based semantically mediated pathway.

Abstract: The present article provides Spanish norms for name agreement, printed word frequency, word compound frequency, familiarity, imageability, visual complexity, age of acquisition, and word length (measured by syllables and phonemes) for 100 line drawings of actions taken from Druks and Masterson (2000). In addition, through a naming-time experiment carried out with a group of 54 Spanish students in a pool of 63 of these line drawings, we determined the best predictors of naming actions. In the multiple regression analysis, age of acquisition and name agreement emerged as the most important determinants of action-naming reaction time.

Several models of comprehension deficits in agrammatic aphasia rely heavily on linear considerations in the assignment of thematic roles to structural positions (e.g., the Trace-Deletion Hypothesis, the Mapping Hypothesis, and the Argument-Linking Hypothesis). These accounts predict that constructions in languages with rules that affect syntactic structure but preserve relative linear order should be unimpaired. Other models [e.g., the Double-Dependency Hypothesis, (DDH)] do not resort to linearity but are purely structural in conception and therefore should be immune to word-order effects. We tested linear and nonlinear accounts with scrambling structures in Korean and topicalization structures in Spanish. The results are very clear. The (nonlinear) DDH is entirely compatible with the evidence, but the linear accounts are not.

We report the naming performance of a fluent aphasic, DP, who shows a striking dissociation between semantic and phonological (nonword) errors: he produced numerous semantic errors but virtually no phonological errors. DP's pattern of performance is the reverse of that reported for patient DM (Caramazza, Papagno, & Ruml, 2000), who only made phonological errors in a naming task. These patterns of performance are inconsistent with the proposal by Dell, Schwartz, Martin, Saffran, and Gagnon (1997) that the naming deficit in fluent aphasia is the result of global damage to all levels of the lexical access system and support instead the hypothesis that brain damage can selectively disrupt distinct subcomponents of the lexical processing system.

Abstract: We present new Spanish norms for object familiarity and rated age of acquisition for 140 pictures taken from Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980), together with data on visual complexity, image agreement, name agreement, word length (in syllables and phonemes), and five measures of word frequency. The pictures were presented to a group of 64 Spanish subjects, and oral naming latencies were recorded. In a multiple regression analysis, age of acquisition, object familiarity, name agreement, word frequency, and word length made significant independent contributions to predicting naming latency.

We report the case of a Spanish patient SC who misread 55 per cent of the single words shown to her. SC's reading accuracy was affected by word imageability and frequency. Nonword reading was very poor. The majority of SC's errors to real-word targets bore a close visual similarity to the items that elicited them, but there was no indication of an effect of serial position on the probability that a letter from a target word would be incorporated into the error made to that word. SC made some visual errors in object naming and also showed evidence of a general semantic impairment. We consider the similarity between SC and patient AB reported by Lambon Ralph and Ellis (1997), and suggest that the very high levels of visual errors shown by these two patients may reflect a combination of visual and semantic impairments.

Several hypotheses have been advanced in recent years to understand difficulties in agrammatic patients. Some of them are of a structural kind, as the deficiency is said to lie in some of the linguistic system components. Others are of a functional type, as it is stated that the problem of these patients lies in the loss of processing capacity.

In this case study of an aphasic patient with difficulties in numerical processing, the patient responded to a series of linguistic and numerical tasks designed to assess efficiency levels in processing various linguistic components. In addition, the patient completed a series of transcoding tasks that were directed at isolating whether the problems were associated primarily with arabic numerals or with other modalities (spoken or written). Data were analyzed using chi-square goodness-of-fit tests. Statistically significant differences were obtained between spoken verbal and written verbal outputs and between arabic and spoken verbal outputs. Based upon an analysis of errors, it was tentatively concluded that the disorders were associated with two types of dissociation operating together, one between spoken verbal and written verbal outputs at the syntactical level and the other between lexical and syntactical components in the spoken verbal output. A revised model is proposed to provide a tentative explanation for these observations.

Several current models of human parsing maintain that initial structural decisions are influenced (or tuned) by the listener's or reader's prior contact with language. The precise workings of these models depend upon the “grain,” or level of detail, at which previous exposures to language are analyzed and used to influence parsing decisions. Some models are premised upon the use of fine-grained records (such as lexical cooccurrence statistics). Others use coarser measures. The present paper considers the viability of models based exclusively on the use of fine-grained lexical records. The results of several studies are reviewed and the evidence suggests that, if they are to account for the data, experience-based parsers must draw upon records or representations that capture statistical regularities beyond the lexical level. This poses problems for several parsing models in the literature.

En este artículo se hace una revisión de las dislexias a partir de los modelos de lectura. Para ello se comienza por describir el modelo de lectura que, según los datos empíricos, rige la ejecución de los lectores normales. A partir de la literatura publicada se puede comprobar que los diferentes tipos de trastornos lectores se pueden explicar a partir del modelo. Se termina comentando las importantes implicaciones de este enfoque en el tratamiento de las dislexias en particular y en los métodos de enseñanza de la lectura en general.

ResumenEl objetivo de este trabajo era investigar si existen diferencias a nivel léxico entre los buenos lectores y los menos hábiles. Dos experimentos, uno de decisión léxica y otro de letura en voz alta (naming), utilizando como estímulos palabras, pseudopalabras y pseudohomófonos, fueron realizados para conocer el uso que unos y otros lectores hacen de las rutas léxica y fonológica. Los resultados muestran que cuando la tarea exige el acceso al léxico las diferencias entre ambos tipos de lectores son sólo cuantitativas, en el sentido que los menos hábiles requieren más tiempo pero el procedimiento que emplean es el mismo que los buenos lectores. En cambio, cuando la tarea no exige el acceso al léxico, se producen además diferencias cualitativas, ya que los buenos lectores, a diferencia de los menos hábiles, se aprovechan del efecto pseudohomofonía.

The aim of this study was to find out if the spelling models proposed to account for performance in languages with a deep orthography are applicable to a shallow orthography such as Spanish. For this reason, two experiments were carried out, one of lexical decision (in which subjects heard words and nonwords but only wrote down the nonwords) and the other a dictation in which the variables of grapheme frequency and lexical priming were manipulated. The results coincide with those found in the English language as in both experiments the two variables produced significant effects: the variable of grapheme frequency, which indicates the existence of a process of phonological spelling and the variable of lexical priming which indicates the existence of a lexical process.

En este trabajo se investigó si los mecanismos encargados de transformar los grafemas en fonemas son los mismos que transforman los fonemas en grafemas, que funcionan en ambas direcciones o si por el contrario se trata de mecanismos independientes. Para ello se presentó una lista de 40 pseudopalabras para su lectura y escritura a 104 niños de los primeros niveles de escolaridad. Los datos obtenidos parecen indicar que se trata de procesos distintos, ya que no existe concordancia entre las respuestas obtenidas en una y otra tarea. Niños que transformaban correctamente determinados grafemas en fonemas fallaban al convertir esos mismos fonenas en grafemas, y viceversa. Estos resultados podrían tener importantes implicaciones en el aprendizaje de la lectura y la escritura.

La frecuencia silábica posicional es una variable de reciente utilización en nuestro idioma. Por su carácter fonológico ha sido utilizada en este trabajo tanto para estudiar su papel en la lectura como para obtener algunas pistas sobre diferencias interlingüísticas entre nuestro idioma y otros que como el inglÉs son más opacos a la hora de traducir a sonidos su ortografía. Se utilizaron dos tipos de pruebas: decisión lÉxica y lectura que presumiblemente implican diferentes demandas cognitivas. Los resultados de la tarea de decisión lÉxica (Experimentos 1 y 3) muestran, en general, que la frecuencia silábica enlentece la respuesta del sujeto tanto en las palabras como en las pseudopalabras, confirmando algunos estudios previos (De Vega et al., 1990). Por el contrario, en la tarea de lectura (Experimentos 2 y 4) la frecuencia silábica tiende a acelerar la respuesta en la mayoría de los estímulos. Este comportamiento diferencial de los sujetos en función de la tÉcnica utilizada sugiere que mientras la decisión lÉxica exige el ascenso hasta el nivel de palabra, la lectura puede realizarse con Éxito desde un nivel prelÉxico silábico.

El objetivo de este trabajo era investigar si existen diferencias a nivel léxico entre los buenos lectores y los menos hábiles. Dos experimentos, uno de decisión léxica y otro de letura en voz alta (naming), utilizando como estímulos palabras, pseudopalabras y pseudohomófonos, fueron realizados para conocer el uso que unos y otros lectores hacen de las rutas léxica y fonológica. Los resultados muestran que cuando la tarea exige el acceso al léxico las diferencias entre ambos tipos de lectores son sólo cuantitativas, en el sentido que los menos hábiles requieren más tiempo pero el procedimiento que emplean es el mismo que los buenos lectores. En cambio, cuando la tarea no exige el acceso al léxico, se producen además diferencias cualitativas, ya que los buenos lectores, a diferencia de los menos hábiles, se aprovechan del efecto pseudohomofonía.

AbstractReading strategies depend on the consistency of the orthographic system. Recently the use of lexical strategies at early stages of reading acquisition has been shown even in transparent orthographies. The aim of this study was to know how different lexical and sublexical variables affect the reaction times (RTs) and articulation times (ATs) in word reading in Spanish children. A group of 46 children of typical reading level in the second and fourth grades of primary school were asked to read aloud 100 words presented on a computer screen. The stimuli were morphologically simple nouns with different ranges of length, frequency, imageability, orthographic neighbors and age of acquisition (AoA). Reading and articulation time were measured. Differences between means of the second and the fourth grade were seen in RTs (p< .001; Cohens´ d= 1.41) and ATs (p< 001;Cohen´s d =1.41) in a t-test. Analyses of mixed-effects revealed that word length, a sublexical variable, and frequency and AoA, lexical variables, affected both grades, mainly on the RTs. The presence of lexical variables reducing RTs and ATs in second grade suggests that lexical reading is present from very early stages in Spanish children.

AbstractMorphemes facilitate visual word recognition, leading to greater accuracy and fluency in reading morphologically complex words. In children with dyslexia, the morphological structure might be useful to reduce difficulties caused by phonological deficits. The aim of this study was to determine whether Spanish-speaking children with dyslexia benefit from morphemes when reading. A group of children with dyslexia of different ages (7 to 10 years) and a group of children without reading disabilities, matched on chronological age and gender, participated in a task of reading isolated words and pseudowords in which morphological complexity was manipulated. Half of the stimuli were morphologically simple and half morphologically complex. Children with dyslexia benefit from morphology since they have better performance with the morphologically complex stimuli. These results indicate that they are able to develop representations of units larger than the grapheme, what suggests that Spanish-speaking children with dyslexia use the morphological structure to overcome their difficulties in phonological recoding. These results have important implications for the rehabilitation of children with dyslexia.