Search

Objective: A reduction in lexical access is observed in normal aging and a few studies also showed that this ability is affected in individuals with subjective cognitive decline. Lexical access is also affected very early in mild cognitive impairment as well as in major neurocognitive disorders. The detection of word-finding difficulties in the earliest stages of pathological aging is particularly difficult because symptoms are often subtle or mild. Therefore, mild anomia is underdiagnosed, mainly due to the lack of sensitivity of naming tests. In this article, we present the TDQ-30, a new picture-naming test designed to detect mild word-finding deficits in adults and elderly people., Method: The article comprises three studies aiming at the development of the test (Study 1), the establishment of its validity and reliability (Study 2), and finally, the production of normative data for French-speaking adults and elderly people from Quebec (Study 3)., Results: The results showed that the TDQ-30 has good convergent validity. Also, the TDQ-30 distinguished the performance of healthy controls from those of participants with mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease, and post-stroke aphasia. This suggests good discriminant validity. Finally, this study provides normative data computed from a study sample composed of 227 participants aged 50 years and over., Conclusions: The TDQ-30 has the potential to become a valuable picture-naming test for the diagnosis of mild anomia associated with pathological aging., (© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permission@oup.com.)

Background/aims: The logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA) is characterized by impaired word-finding and sentence repetition with phonologic errors but spared motor speech and grammar and semantic knowledge. Although its language deficits have been well studied, the full spectrum of cognitive changes in the lvPPA remains to be defined. We aimed to explore the neurocognitive profile of the lvPPA using a newly developed cognitive screening tool for atypical dementias, the Dépistage Cognitif de Québec (DCQ)., Methods: We compared 29 patients with lvPPA to 72 amnestic variant Alzheimer disease (aAD) to 438 healthy control (HC) participants. Performance on the 5 indexes of the DCQ (Memory, Visuospatial, Executive, Language and Behavioral) was compared between the 3 groups., Results: Results showed a significantly lower performance for lvPPA participants in all neurocognitive domains, when compared to HC. When compared to aAD, lvPPA participants had significantly lower scores for language, executive, and visuospatial abilities, but not for memory and behavior., Conclusion: Altogether, these findings better define the neurocognitive changes of lvPPA., (© 2020 S. Karger AG, Basel.)

Objective: The aim of this study was to establish normative data for the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, a test assessing verbal episodic memory, in the older French-Quebec population., Method: A total of 432 French-speaking participants aged between 55 and 93 years old, from the Province of Quebec (Canada), were included in the study. Using multiple regression analyses, normative data were developed for five variable of interest, namely scores on trial 1, sum of trials 1 to 5, interference list B, immediate recall of list A, and delayed recall of list A., Results: Results showed that age, education, and sex were associated with performance on all variables. Equations to calculate the expected score for a participant based on sex, age, and education level as well as the Z score were developed., Conclusion: This study provides clinicians with normative data that take into account the participants' sociodemographic characteristics, thus giving a more accurate interpretation of the results.