How justice can affect jury: training abstract words promotes generalisation to concrete words in patients with aphasia.

Developing language treatments that not only improve trained items but also promote generalisation to untrained items is a major focus in aphasia research. This study is a replication and extension of previous work which found that training abstract words in a particular context-category promotes generalisation to concrete words but not vice versa (Kiran, Sandberg, & Abbott, 2009 ). Twelve persons with aphasia (five female) with varying types and degrees of severity participated in a generative naming treatment based on the Complexity Account of Treatment Efficacy (CATE; Thompson, Shapiro, Kiran, & Sobecks, 2003 ). All participants were trained to generate abstract words in a particular context-category by analysing the semantic features of the target words. Two other context-categories were used as controls. Ten of the twelve participants improved on the trained abstract words in the trained context-category. Eight of the ten participants who responded to treatment also generalised to concrete words in the same context-category. These results suggest that this treatment is both efficacious and efficient. We discuss possible mechanisms of training and generalisation effects.

Cortical neuroanatomical changes related to specific language impairments in primary progressive aphasia.

Objective: Language function test-specific neural substrates in Korean patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) might differ from those in other causes of dementia and English-speaking PPA patients. We investigated the correlation between language performance tests and cortical thickness to determine neural substrates in Korean patients with PPA. Materials and methods: Ninety-six patients with PPA were recruited from the memory clinic. To acquire neural substrates, we performed linear regression using the scores of each language test as a predictor, cortical thickness as an outcome and age, sex, years of education, and intracranial volume as confounders. Results: Poor performance in each language function test was associated with lower cortical thickness in specific cortical regions: (1) object naming and the bilateral anterior to mid-portion of the lateral temporal and basal temporal regions; (2) semantic generative naming and the bilateral anterior to mid-portion of the lateral temporal and basal temporal regions; (3) phonemic generative naming and the left prefrontal and inferior parietal regions; and (4) comprehension and the left posterior portion of the superior and middle temporal regions. In particular, the neural substrates of the semantic generative naming test in PPA patients, left anterior to mid-portion of the lateral and basal temporal regions, quite differed from those in patients with other causes of dementia. Conclusion: Our findings provide a better understanding of the different pathomechanisms for language impairments among PPA patients from those with other causes of dementia.

Verbal fluency in three Spanish-English bilingual speakers with TBI.

This study investigated differences between healthy bilingual participants and bilingual participants with traumatic brain injury (TBI) on verbal fluency tasks. The performance of three Spanish-English bilingual speakers with traumatic brain injury was compared to the performance of 30 neurotypical bilingual speakers on tasks of category and letter verbal fluency in English and Spanish. Responses were analyzed for total number of correct productions, differences in correct productions between languages, average cluster size, total number of switches, and rates of language choice errors. The data were analyzed using predicted scores from regression equations based on neurotypical data and modified t-tests. Analyses revealed significantly lower total output than predicted by the regression equations for both task types and in both languages for one TBI participant. The same participant demonstrated significantly lower total number of switches than the neurotypical group. Two participants demonstrated higher rates of language choice errors than the neurotypical group. There were no significant differences between TBI participants and the neurotypical group for average cluster size. There were no significant differences between predicted and obtained values for differences between English and Spanish total number correct in each task type. Results are discussed in the context of individual cognitive and linguistic profiles of the TBI participants.