Search

The Detection Test for Language Impairments in Adults and the Aged (DTLA) is a quick, sensitive, and standardized screening test designed to assess language disorders in adults and elderly people. The test was specifically developed to detect linguistic impairment associated with major neurocognitive disorders. In 2017, we established normative data on 545 healthy individuals between 50 and 80 years old from four French-speaking countries: Belgium, Canada (Quebec), France, and Switzerland. Objective The objective of the present study was to develop norms for the population older than 80 years of age for the DTLA. Method We extend the original normative data to include 149 healthy, community-dwelling, French-speaking adults aged 80 years old and older from the same countries. Results For the total score of the screening test, we calculated the 5th, 15th, 25th, and 50th percentiles for two education groups. The analyses allowed the identification of cutoff and alert scores based on education level. Conclusions With the present study, solid normative data for the DTLA derived from the performance of 694 healthy, community-dwelling adults, and elderly people are now available to clinicians and researchers.

The present study focuses on referential choices made by healthy aged adults during narrative discourse, and their relationship with cognitive and socio-cognitive abilities. Previously, some studies have shown that, compared to young adults, older adults produce more pronouns when referring to various entities during discourse, regardless of the accessibility level of the referent for the addressee. This referential behavior has been interpreted in relation to the decrease of cognitive abilities, such as working memory abilities. There is, as of yet, little empirical evidence highlighting which cognitive competences preferentially support referential choices during discourse production. Here, we focus on three categories of referential markers (indefinite, definite markers and pronouns) produced by 78 participants from 60 to 91 years old. We used a storytelling task enabling us to examine the referential choices made at three discourse stages (introduction, maintaining or shift of the referent in focus) and in increasing levels of referential complexity (one vs two characters, and different vs same gender). In addition to specifically assessing how increasing age influences referential choices, we also examine the contribution of various cognitive and socio-cognitive skills that are presumed to play a specific role in referential choices. We found that both age and specific cognitive abilities (planification, inhibition, and verbal episodic memory) had an effect on referential choices, but that these effects depended on when (at which discourse stage) the referential markers were produced. Overall, our study highlights the complex interplay between discursive and cognitive factors in referential choices made by healthy older speakers.

Background: Many individuals with aphasia (IWA) experience sentence production deficits (SPD), which can affect their daily interactions. Even if distinct treatments have been developed to improve ...

International audience; Past research shows that when a discourse referent is mentioned repeatedly, it is usually introduced with a full noun phrase and maintained with a reduced form such as a pronoun. Is this also the case in dialogue, where the same referent may be introduced by one person and maintained by another person? An experiment was conducted in which participants either told entire stories to each other or told stories together, thus enabling us to contrast situations in which characters were introduced and maintained by the same person (control condition) and situations in which the introduction and the maintaining of each character were performed by different people (alternating condition). Story complexity was also manipulated through the introduction of one or two characters in each story. We found that participants were less likely to use reduced forms to maintain referents in the alternating condition. The use of reduced forms also depended on the context in which the referent was maintained (in particular, first or second mention of a character) and on story complexity. These results shed light on how the pressure to signal understanding to one’s conversational partner affects referential choices throughout the interaction.

Objective Nonliteral language comprehension disorders in individuals with acquired brain injuries (ABI) are frequently reported in the literature but rarely assessed in clinical settings. A major reason is the lack of tools available to clinicians. Therefore, the present study aimed to further promote the pragmatic assessment routine by creating a new nonliteral language comprehension tool for ABI individuals: the IRRI test. This tool is intended to be standardized and capable of directing clinicians to cognitive deficits underlying a poor understanding of nonliteral language—context processing, executive functions, and theory of mind. Method Three studies were conducted. The first study aimed at constructing the two IRRI test tasks: the irony and indirect requests comprehension tasks. These tasks integrate the cognitive processes within them. The second study aimed at analyzing the tasks’ psychometric qualities in a sample of 33 ABI participants and 33 healthy participants (HC). Preliminary normative data obtained from 102 healthy French-speaking subjects were collected in the third study. Results Significant differences in the IRRI test’s performances were observed between the ABI and HC individuals. The indirect requests task demonstrated robust convergent validity and good sensibility to discriminate altered participants among ABI participants. Both IRRI test’s tasks also showed excellent test–retest and inter-rater reliability. The preliminary norms were stratified according to the conditions of interest in relation to the cognitive mechanisms underlying the understanding of nonliteral language. Conclusions The IRRI test is a promising new standardized test of nonliteral language comprehension, which contributes to identifying cognitive-pragmatic profiles to guide therapy.

People with schizophrenia (SZ) often present with theory of mind (ToM) deficits and with speech production deficits. While a link has been established between ToM abilities and symptoms of thought disorder, much less is known about other aspects of speech production in SZ.This is a case-control study in which 25 stable outpatients with recent-onset SZ (27.1 years, 22 men) and 22 matched healthy controls (25.6 years, 16 men) performed a collaborative, verbal production task with a real interaction partner. Blind raters scored how easy participants made it to understand them (Facility ratings), how interesting they were to listen to (Interest ratings) and how expressive they were (Expressivity ratings). ToM was assessed with the Combined Stories Test and Sarfati's cartoon task. Symptoms were assessed with the PANSS five-factor version.Compared to healthy controls, SZ received significantly lower ratings for all three aspects of their verbal productions (Facility, Interest and Expressivity), despite the raters being blind to group membership. Interestingly, the Facility ratings were linked to ToM performance in the SZ group, which suggest that SZ participants who have difficulties understanding others (ToM deficits) also make it harder for others to understand them. Other notable findings include a strong link between the Expressivity ratings and the Interest ratings for both groups, and significant correlations between the Facility ratings and Cognitive/Disorganisation symptoms, and between the Expressivity ratings and both Negative and Depression/Anxiety symptoms in SZ.Studying speech production during real, collaborative social interactions could help move beyond the individual approach to SZ deficits, making it possible to involve the interaction partners to promote more efficient communication for people with schizophrenia.

Several studies have shown that people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) tend to use more pronouns than healthy aged adults when referring to entities during discourse. This referential behavior has been associated with the decrease of cognitive abilities, such as lexical retrieval difficulties or reduced abilities in working memory. However, the influence of certain important discourse factors on the referential choices made by people with AD has yet to be established. This study examines referential choices made at three discourse stages during narrative discourse (the introduction of a referent, the maintaining of the referent in focus, and the shift from one referent in focus to another). These referential choices are examined in increasingly complex referential contexts. In addition, this study investigates the relationships between referential choices and various cognitive abilities. To do so, the narrative discourses of 21 people with AD and 21 healthy adults were elicited using a newly developed storytelling in sequence task. The analyses focused on the production of three major referential expressions (indefinite expressions, definite expressions and pronouns) which are expected to vary according to discourse stage and the referential complexity of the stories. The results show that AD participants produce significantly fewer of the referential expressions expected at the introduction and shift stages than healthy aged adults produce. Nevertheless, the variation in the categories of referential expressions produced by the AD participants between the discourse stages is similar to that produced by the healthy aged adults, suggesting a preserved sensitivity to the factors manipulated in the task (i.e., discourse stages and referential complexity). This study also highlights the fact that different cognitive competences, especially executive abilities, are greatly involved in referential choices. The results add further evidence that referential choices rely on a variety of cognitive skills, depending on the discourse context in which they are made.

The present study investigates the processing of presuppositions across the life span and extends the findings of the only available study on presupposition processing and typical aging by Domaneschi and Di Paola (J Pragmat 140:70–87, 2019). In an online and offline task, we investigate the impact of cognitive load during the processing and recovery of two presupposition triggers—definite descriptions and change-of-state verbs—comparing a group of younger adults with a group of older adults. The collected experimental data show that (1) presupposition recovery declines during normal aging, (2) presupposition recovery of change-of-state verbs is more cognitively demanding for older adults than the recovery of definite descriptions, and lastly (3) presupposition recovery for the change-of-state verbbeginis more demanding than the change-of-state verbstop. As of today, few works have directly investigated presupposition processing across the life span. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work revealing that cognitive load directly impacts the recovery of presuppositions across the life span, which in turn suggests an involvement of verbal working memory.

This paper introduces an innovative functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) protocol to study real verbal interactions while limiting the impact of speech-related movement artefacts. This protocol is based on a sparse sampling acquisition technique and allowed participants to complete a referential communication task with a real interaction partner. During verbal interactions, speakers adjust their verbal productions depending on their interlocutors’ knowledge of the referents being mentioned. These adjustments have been linked to theory of mind (ToM), the ability to infer other’s mental states. We thus sought to determine if the brain regions supporting ToM would also be activated during a referential communication task in which participants have to present movie characters that vary in their likelihood of being known by their interlocutor. This pilot study establishes that the sparse sampling strategy is a viable option to study the neural correlates of referential communication while minimizing movement artefacts. In addition, the brain regions supporting ToM were recruited during the task, though specifically for the conditions where participants could adjust their verbal productions to the interlocutor’s likely knowledge of the referent. This study therefore demonstrates the feasibility and relevance of a sparse-sampling approach to study verbal interactions with fMRI, including referential communication.

International audience; Objective: The comprehension of irony can be affected after brain injuries. The cognitive mechanisms accounting for such disorders remain yet unclear. The heterogeneity of cognitive profiles of brain-damaged individuals and the use of independent tests to measure the links between these mechanisms and the comprehension of irony might contribute to this lack of clarity. The present study aimed to further explore the underlying mechanisms of irony-understanding disorders (i.e., context processing, executive functions [EF], and theory of mind [ToM]) in patients with brain lesions. Method: We used a paradigm manipulating these mechanisms within an irony task to identify different patterns of pragmatic performance associated with cognitive profiles. We administered this task and standard neuropsychological tests assessing EF and ToM to 30 participants with acquired brain injury (ABI) and 30 healthy control (HC) participants. Results: A cluster analysis revealed that two thirds of the participants with ABI (3 subgroups out of 4) presented atypical pragmatic and neuropsychological patterns. The most severe disturbances in understanding irony, characterized by insensitivity to the context, were associated with a joint impairment of ToM and EF in 1 subgroup. In the 2 other context-sensitive subgroups, an isolated deficit in EF co-occurred with difficulties dealing with literal or ironic statements when the EF demand of the irony task was increased. However, the effect of this EF demand could be negated by the presence of markers helping the comprehension of irony. Conclusion: These results have important clinical implications for the evaluation and therapy of pragmatic disorders in individuals with ABI. Key Points Question: Explore the role of 3 cognitive mechanisms-context processing, EF, and ToM-in the comprehension of irony in patients with ABI. Findings: There are distinct subgroups of ABI, defined by different associations between these mechanisms and the understanding of irony. Importance: These cognitive mechanisms and the pathological profiles related to them should be considered in the development of assessment tools and therapies. Next Steps: The effectiveness of treatments targeting these cognitive mechanisms on the comprehension of irony should be further explored.

Purpose Better performance for actions compared to objects has been reported in the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). This study investigated the influence of the assessment task (naming, semantic picture matching) over the dissociation between objects and actions. Method Ten individuals with svPPA and 17 matched controls completed object and action naming tests, and object and action semantic picture matching tests. Performance was compared between the svPPA and control groups, within the svPPA group, and for each participant with svPPA versus the control group individually. Results Compared to controls, participants with svPPA were impaired on object and action naming, and object and action semantic picture matching. As a group, participants with svPPA had an advantage for actions over objects and for semantic picture matching tests over naming tests. Eight participants had a better performance for actions compared to objects in naming, with three showing a significant difference. Nine participants had a better performance for actions compared to objects in semantic picture matching, with six showing a significant difference. For objects, semantic picture matching was better than naming in nine participants, with five showing a significant difference. For actions, semantic picture matching was better than naming in all 10 participants, with nine showing a significant difference. Conclusion The nonverbal processing of actions, as assessed with a semantic picture matching test, is an area of relative strength in svPPA. Clinical implications for assessment planning and interpretation and theoretical implications for current models of semantic cognition are discussed.

Cette contribution a pour objectif principal d’examiner les relations entre saillance referentielle et duree des pauses, et leurs variations chez des locuteurs jeunes adultes et seniors. L’objectif secondaire est d’explorer l’existence d’un lien potentiel entre la duree des pauses et l’habilete de prise en compte de l’autre. Pour cette etude, des narrations d’images sequentielles et un questionnaire d’autoevaluation ont ete utilises. Les resultats ont montre que les pauses silencieuses semblent implicitement marquer l’acte referentiel : les pauses sont plus longues avant un changement de referent d’accessibilite moindre comparativement a l’evocation d’un referent maintenu. L’evocation d’un referent – quelle que soit son accessibilite – parait plus complexe pour les seniors comparativement aux jeunes adultes. Cette complexite s’avere plus presente chez les seniors qui ont des difficultes de prise en compte de l’autre.

Inflectional morphology difficulties are typically reported in non-fluent aphasia with agrammatism, but a growing number of studies show that they can also be present in fluent aphasia. In agrammatism, morphological difficulties are conceived as the consequence of impaired phonological encoding and would affect regular verbs more than irregular verbs. However, studies show that inflectional morphology difficulties concern both regular and irregular verbs, and that their origin could be more conceptual/semantic in nature. Additionally, studies report more pronounced impairments for the processing of the past tense compared to other tenses. The goal of this study was to characterize the impairment of inflectional morphology in fluent aphasia. RY, a 69-year-old man with chronic fluent aphasia completed a short neuropsychological and language battery and three experimental tasks of inflectional morphology. The tasks assessed the capacity to select the correct inflected form of a verb based on time information, to access the time information included in an inflectional morpheme, and to produce verbs with tense inflection. His performance was compared to a group of five adults without language impairments. Results showed that RY had difficulties selecting the correct inflected form of a verb, accessing time information transmitted by inflectional morphemes, and producing inflected verbs. His difficulties affected both regular and irregular verbs, and verbs in the present, past, and future tenses. The performance also shows the influence of processing limitations over the production and comprehension of inflectional morphology. More studies of inflectional morphology in fluent aphasia are needed to understand the origin of difficulties.

An increasing number of studies focus on discourse production in patients with neurodegenerative diseases and underline its clinical usefulness. However, if this is to be used as a clinical tool, one needs to consider how normal discourse varies within cognitively unimpaired elderly populations. In the current study, the aim has been to investigate discourse macrolinguistic variability. For this, 123 participants aged between 55 and 84 were recruited. A cluster analysis of their discourse macrolinguistic features was conducted. Then, cluster characterisation based on socio-demographic and linguistic performance was tested (fluency, naming, syntax and spelling). This method aims to identify various profiles of speaker and informativeness and then see if inter-individual variability may be related to socio-demographic and/or linguistic aspects. Four clusters of informativeness were found but no socio-demographic features appeared significant. The fourth cluster, defined as 'off topic', had lower performance during linguistic tasks than others and thus the boundary between normality and pathology should be questioned.

Assessing one's sentence production ability can help to identify difficulties experienced by individuals with aphasia and enables targeted intervention. Speech-language pathologists working with the francophone population must contend with the current lack of a sentence production evaluation tool. The aim of this article is to present the development, validation, and normative data of a French-language test used to evaluate the production of sentences: the BEPS (Batterie d'Évaluation de la Production Syntaxique). The BEPS includes four tasks based on Bock and Levelt's model of sentence production, namely (1) Verb Naming Task, (2) Verb Inflection Task, (3) Constituent Assembly Task, and (4) Thematic Role Assignment Task. For each task, various psycholinguistic parameters were controlled or manipulated. The BEPS had good content and construct validity, excellent test-retest reliability and good internal consistency. This battery fulfills the current needs for clinical tool in the francophone population when assessing sentence production capacities. Normative data are presented for individuals 19-79 years of age (

Effective communication requires adjusting one’s discourse to be understood by the addressee. While some suggest that choices of referring expressions are dependent on the addressee’s accessibility to the referent there is also evidence for an egocentric bias in speech production. This study relied on two new experimental tasks designed to assess whether speakers adapt their choices of referential expressions when introducing movie characters that are either likely known or likely unknown by their addressee and when maintaining or reintroducing these characters at a later point in the discourse. Results revealed an adjustment to the addressee in the use of character’s names (increased for likely known characters) and definite expressions (increased for likely unknown characters) observed at all the discourse stages. Use of indefinite expressions and names was affected by the participant’s own knowledge specifically when introducing the characters. These results indicate that speakers take their addressee’s likely knowledge into account at multiple discourse stages.

Studies on inflectional morphology in semantic dementia (SD) have focused on the contrast between the regular and the irregular English past-tense. These studies aimed to contrast the claims of single- and dual-mechanism theories. However, both theories can account for impaired production of irregular verbs observed in SD. According to the dual-mechanism theory, this impairment is related to word-retrieval difficulties, while according to single-mechanism theory it is the consequence of semantic impairment. However, authors suggest that it is time to envision a broader role for semantic memory in the production of semantically encoded aspects of inflectional morphology. This study reports the performance of 10 French-speaking patients with SD in three tasks of inflectional morphology. Their performances were compared to those of a group of 20 age-, gender- and education-matched adults without cognitive impairment. Results show that SD patients had difficulties producing tense and person inflection in verbs and pseudo-verbs, whether regular or pseudo-regular. In a second task in which participants were directly exposed to regularity manipulations, SD patients tended to choose a more typical or predictable alternative over a correctly inflected verb. Results of the third task show that their difficulties in producing semantically encoded aspects of inflection, such as tense, are related to difficulties to understand the semantic content conveyed by inflectional morphemes. Overall, these results support the claim that semantic impairment can cause morphological deficits that do not only affect irregular verbs, but that also have impacts on the production and comprehension of semantic information conveyed by inflectional morphemes.

There is disagreement within both linguistics and psycholinguistics concerning the use of unaccented third person pronouns to refer to implicit referents. Some researchers (e.g., Erkü & Gundel, 1987) argue that it is impossible or highly marked, while others (e.g., Yule, 1982) maintain that it is not only acceptable but commonly used in normal discourse. However, both sides in the debate may be correct: while peripheral implicit referents (which evoke the means or the instrument by which a given state of affairs is established) are not easily referred to using pronouns, central or ‘nuclear’ implicit referents are. We tested this hypothesis in two experiments, involving different languages (English and French). The results of both experiments show that pronominal reference to implicit referents caused slower reading times compared to explicit referents for peripheral referents only. We discuss these results with respect to Gundel, Hedberg, and Zacharski’s (1993, 2000) Givenness Hierarchy.

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the degree of incongruity between contextual information and a target sentence influences the extent to which irony is understood in individuals with right-frontal-hemisphere damage (RHD). A psycholinguistic paradigm was used, allowing us to assess whether impairment in irony understanding is likely to be due to insensitivity (i.e. difficulty in capturing or detecting relevant contextual information) to relevant contextual information or to difficulties in integrating contextual information. Twenty individuals with RHD and 20 healthy control (HC) participants were tested on their understanding of a speaker’s ironic intent and their executive functions. The main results revealed that individuals with RHD exhibit different patterns of performance, some of them being able to understand irony while in others this ability was impaired. The present study gives support to the hypothesis that difficulties in adequately using contextual information may account for pragmatic impairment of individuals with RHD. More importantly, the results suggested that these difficulties are related to a lack of sensitivity to contextual information instead of difficulty integrating it along with the ironic utterance. A subgroup of individuals with RHD processed the speaker’s utterance without any reference to contextual information, which led them to a literal interpretation of the utterance.

Although there is growing interest in inflectional morphology in semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), derivational morphology has rarely been studied in this population. This study reports the performance of N.G., a 72-year-old-woman with svPPA in a verb production task designed to entail morphological processing (composition, decomposition) and self-appraisal of her productions. N.G. demonstrated an over-reliance on morphological processing and failures in her appraisal of root/affix combinations that resulted in the production of morphological paraphasias and neologisms. Her performance in lexical decision of verbs and pseudo-verbs points to the involvement of semantic impairment in these difficulties.

Compared to cognitive functions such as working memory and executive functions, language appears to be mostly resistant to age-related decline. However, language is affected in the early stages of major forms of dementia and language deficits are at the core of the clinical portrait of primary progressive aphasias. Primary care providers are frequently faced with patients whose main complaints concern language problems in everyday and professional life. Up to now, no brief, accurate, screening test, which could be applied during routine office visits, was available for language deficits in neurodegenerative diseases. The aim of this study is to fill this important need by developing a handy, sensitive and brief detection test for language impairments in adults and aging. In this presentation, we describe the psychometric properties of the DTLA (Detection Test for Language impairments in Adults and Aging), a new screening test developed in four French-speaking countries (Belgium, Canada, France and Switzerland). We first present the development phase of the DTLA, then we provide normative data for healthy, community-dwelling, French-speaking people from the four countries. Finally, we report data on the convergent and discriminant validity of the DTLA as well as on its test-retest and internal consistency reliability. The use of the DTLA could improve the diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases, especially those in which language is primarily affected. Ultimately, this will permit patients and their families to receive adequate services at an earlier stage of the disease.

To date, there is no quick screening test that could be used during routine office visits to accurately assess language disorders in neurodegenerative diseases. To fill this important gap, we developed the Detection Test for Language impairments in Adults and the Aged (DTLA), a quick, sensitive, standardized screening test designed to assess language disorders in adults and the elderly individuals. In Study 1, we describe the development of the DTLA. In Study 2, we report data on the DTLA’s validity and reliability. Finally, in Study 3, we establish normative data for the test. The DTLA has good convergent and discriminant validity as well as good internal consistency and test–retest reliability. Norms for the DTLA obtained from a sample of 545 healthy, community-dwelling, French-speaking adults from 4 French-speaking countries (Belgium, Canada (Quebec), France, and Switzerland) are provided. The development, validation, and standardization of the DTLA constitute a significant effort to meet the need for a language screening test adapted to neurodegenerative diseases.

Objectives: Theory of mind (ToM) performance in aging and dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) has been a growing interest of researchers and recently theoretical trends in ToM development have led to a focus on determining the cognitive skills involved in ToM performance. The aim of the present review is to answer three main questions: How is ToM assessed in aging and DAT? How does ToM performance evolve in aging and DAT? Do cognitive processesinfluence ToM performance in aging and DAT? Method: A systematic review was conducted to provide a targeted overview of recent studies relating ToM performance with cognitive processes in aging and DAT. Results: Results suggest a decrease in ToM performance more pronounced in complex ToM tasks. Moreover the review points up the strong involvement of executive functions especially inhibition and reasoning skills in ToM task achievement. Conclusion: Current data suggest that the structure of ToM tasks itself could lead to poor performance especially in populations with reduced cognitive abilities. Keywords: Theory of mind; aging; Alzheimer’s dementia; cognitive processes; systematic review

La maladie de Parkinson est une maladie neurodégénérative caractérisée par des troubles moteurs mais également par des troubles cognitifs affectant la mémoire de travail, la mémoire déclarative et les capacités attentionnelles. Sur le plan du langage, on relève aussi dans cette maladie la présence de troubles de la morphologie flexionnelle. Dans cet article, nous présentons et discutons des appuis respectifs aux propositions procédurales et exécutives relatives à l’origine fonctionnelle des troubles morphologiques flexionnels dans la maladie de Parkinson. Nous rapporterons également les résultats d’une étude que nous avons menée récemment auprès de 15 sujets souffrant de la MP et qui suggère une contribution, non spécifique au langage, des ganglions de la base aux processus exécutifs impliqués en morphologie flexionnelle. Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative neurological condition characterized by motor deficits but also by cognitive deficits affecting working memory, declarative memory and attentional capacities. With respect to language, the disease is also marked by the impairment of inflectional morphological processes. In this article, we present and discuss the respective supports to the procedural and executive functional origin of inflectional morphology impairment in Parkinson’s disease. We also report the results from a recent study, conducted with 15 individuals with PD, suggesting a contribution, non-exclusive to language, of basal ganglia to executive processes involved in inflectional morphology.

Three experiments examined the hypothesis that the demonstrative noun phrase (NP) that N, as an anadeictic expression, preferentially refers to the less salient referent in a discourse representation when used anaphorically, whereas the anaphoric pronoun he or she preferentially refers to the highly-focused referent. The findings, from a sentence completion task and two reading time experiments that used gender to create ambiguous and unambiguous coreference, reveal that the demonstrative NP specifically orients processing toward a less salient referent when there is no gender cue discriminating between different possible referents. These findings show the importance of taking into account the discourse function of the anaphor itself and its influence on the process of searching for the referent.

Background: Only a few studies have focused on derivational morphology in semantic dementia (SD). The productive and componential nature of derivational morphology as well as recent findings in psycholinguistics suggest that semantic cognition would be involved in the production and comprehension of derivational morphemes and derived words. Therefore, participants with SD might present impairment in derivational morphology. Aims: This study aims to specify semantic cognition’s involvement in the production and comprehension of derivational morphemes and morphologically complex words in SD participants. This involvement was considered in relation to the production of morphologically complex words, the comprehension of the meaning conveyed by morphemes, and the capacity to distinguish between words with a real vs. an apparent morphological structure. Methods and Procedures: Ten French-speaking SD participants completed three tasks of derivational morphology. Their performances were compared to those of a group of 20 age-, gender- and education-matched adults without cognitive impairment. Outcomes and Results: Compared with participants of the control group, SD participants had more difficulty producing nouns derived from verbs that follow less-frequent patterns of root allomorphy, while their performance was less affected when they could rely on basic morphological decomposition/composition abilities. Participants with SD also had more difficulties to match derived words and pseudo-words to a definition and to distinguish between pairs of real morphological antonyms and pseudo-morphological non-antonyms. Conclusions: These results support the involvement of semantic cognition in the validation of morpheme combinations and in derivational morpheme representation. Difficulties in the production and comprehension of derived words and derivational morphemes are another of the many consequences of central semantic impairment that characterises SD. More studies are needed to develop tests and further characterise the involvement of semantic cognition in derivational morphology.

To communicate cooperatively, speakers must determine what constitutes the common ground with their addressee and adapt their referential choices accordingly. Assessing another person’s knowledge requires a social cognition ability termed theory of mind. This study relies on a novel referential communication task requiring probabilistic inferences of the knowledge already held by an addressee prior to the study. Forty participants were asked to present ten movie characters and the addressee, who had the same characters in a random order, was asked to place them in order. Theory of mind and other aspects of social cognition were also assessed. Participants used more information when presenting likely unknown than likely known movie characters. They particularly increased their use of physical descriptors, which most often accompanied movie-related information. Interestingly, a significant relationship emerged between our theory of mind test and the increased amount of information given for the likely unknown characters. These results suggest that speakers use theory of mind to infer their addressee’s likely knowledge and accordingly adapt their referential expressions.

Consensual recommendations for the diagnostic criteria of three variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) were published in 2011. Since their publication, these recommendations were the object of criticism, which has recently led to the proposition of their revision. This article gives a description of the criteria that preceded the consensual criteria currently in use, and presents the different limits and controversies regarding the description of each PPA variant's language profile. These controversies will be examined in terms of the description of each variant's central manifestations, their differential diagnosis, the links between each clinical entity and its underlying pathology, and the evolution of the language profile. Lastly, this article offers perspectives regarding language evaluation in PPA that have several implications for clinical practice and research.