A new set of tasks for the assessment of lexical disorders in Italian

Field: Psychology (Social Sciences)

Event Abstract Back to Event A new set of tasks for the assessment of lexical disorders in Italian Laura Veronelli1*, Ilaria Scola2, Mirella Frustaci3, Massimo Corbo1 and Claudio Luzzatti4, 5 1 Casa di Cura del Policlinico, Department of Neurorehabilitation Sciences, Italy 2 Centro Medico di Montescano, Fondazione Salvatore Maugeri, Italy 3 ASST Rhodense, Rehabilitation Unit, Passirana Hospital, Italy 4 Università di Milano-Bicocca, Department of Psychology, Italy 5 Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Italy Tasks used in the evaluation of language impairments are often overly complex and ineffective in the assessment of post-stroke patients affected by severe aphasia. These patients may obtain very low accuracy scores, which may not correspond to a complete deterioration of their lexical abilities. These considerations point out the necessity of a language test that may be able to assess severe as well as mild lexical impairments, to detect possible dissociations between different lexical tasks, as well as to measure small but significant variations in the patients’ performance over time and the effects of aphasia treatment. The present study reports details on the construction and standardization of a new Italian battery of tasks for the assessment of severe lexical disorders in acquired aphasia. The battery is composed of a common set of 64 stimuli (concrete nouns), belonging to both living and non-living categories, and consists of four lexical tasks assessing picture naming, repetition, reading aloud and oral comprehension. The item selection was based on three variables: (i) high and low word frequency; (ii) word length; (iii) phonological-articulatory difficulty, namely presence of continuant vs. plosive phones, which, for severely impaired patients, may influence/facilitate word retrieval and articulation, especially after specific rehabilitation treatment (Luzzatti, 2012; Luzzatti, Colombo, Frustaci, & Vitolo, 2000). Standardization (naming agreement) of a new set of 64 colored images and normative data on 110 Italian healthy subjects (55 females; mean age =54±20.5 years; mean education =12.9 ys±4.7 years), were collected for the confrontation naming task. Linear regression analyses showed a significant effect of age (p < 0.001) and education (p < 0.001), while no significant effect was found for gender (p = 0.21). According to the procedure described by Capitani & Laiacona (1988, 1997), results from the final multiple regression analysis proved both age and education, after transformation [log (100-age) and 1/educ], as best predictors of performance (F2,109 = 23.92, p < 0.001). Using the best-fit model, correction grids and equivalent scores were computed. For the oral comprehension task a cut-off score was calculated from a pool of healthy participants, while no errors were made in either the repetition or the reading aloud tasks. Finally, for the four tasks, we calculated standardized scores and percentiles from a pool of 85 patients affected by aphasia of different sub-types (see Table 1) and severity. The battery allows a fine investigation of lexical disorders, being suitable for diagnostic assessment, detection of changes over time, and possible dissociations between comprehension, confrontation naming, repetition and reading tasks. Table 1. Number of post-stroke patients included in the study, divided by aphasia sub-type. Figure 1 References Capitani, E., & Laiacona, M. (1988). Aging and psychometric diagnosis of intellectual impairment: Some considerations on test scores and their use. Developmental Neuropsychology, 4(4), 325–330. https://doi.org/10.1080/87565648809540416 Capitani, E., & Laiacona, M. (1997). Composite neuropsychological batteries and demographic correction: Standardization based on equivalent scores, with a review of Published Data. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 19(6), 795–809. https://doi.org/10.1080/01688639708403761 Luzzatti, C. (2012). La rieducazione dei deficit fonologici e dell’articolazione. In A. Mazzucchi (Ed.), La Riabilitazione Neuropsicologica: Premesse teoriche ed applicazioni cliniche. (3rd ed., pp. 25–47). Milano: Elsevier. Luzzatti, C., Colombo, C., Frustaci, M., & Vitolo, F. (2000). Rehabilitation of spelling along the sub-word-level routine. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 10(3), 249–278. https://doi.org/10.1080/096020100389156 Keywords: Naming impairment, Comprehension deficits, reading impairment, repetition deficits, Lexical Processing Conference: Academy of Aphasia 56th Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada, 21 Oct - 23 Oct, 2018. Presentation Type: poster presentation Topic: not eligible for a student prize Citation: Veronelli L, Scola I, Frustaci M, Corbo M and Luzzatti C (2019). A new set of tasks for the assessment of lexical disorders in Italian. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 56th Annual Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2018.228.00014 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 30 Apr 2018; Published Online: 22 Jan 2019. * Correspondence: PhD. Laura Veronelli, Casa di Cura del Policlinico, Department of Neurorehabilitation Sciences, Milan, Italy, l.veronelli@ccppdezza.it Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Laura Veronelli Ilaria Scola Mirella Frustaci Massimo Corbo Claudio Luzzatti Google Laura Veronelli Ilaria Scola Mirella Frustaci Massimo Corbo Claudio Luzzatti Google Scholar Laura Veronelli Ilaria Scola Mirella Frustaci Massimo Corbo Claudio Luzzatti PubMed Laura Veronelli Ilaria Scola Mirella Frustaci Massimo Corbo Claudio Luzzatti Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.