Age of acquisition effects on action naming in progressive fluent aphasia

Veronica Bradley a, Robert Davies b, Ben Parris b, I Fan Su b, Brendan Stuart Weekes b,*

a Hurstwood Park Neurological Centre, UKb University of Sussex, UK

Accepted 6 July 2006

Introduction

Several studies report effects of the age of acquisition of a word (AoA)on object (noun) naming in aphasia (Hirsh & Ellis, 1994; Hirsh & Funnell,1995). These reports include studies of patients with dementia of the Alz-heimer’s type and progressive fluent aphasia or semantic dementia (Kre-min et al., 2001; Lambon Ralph, Graham, Ellis, & Hodges, 1998; Ukita,Abe, & Yamada, 1999). Recently, there has been interest in investigatingAoA effects on naming of action pictures (verbs). Using multiple regres-sion methods, three studies report independent effects of AoA on namingin non-aphasic speakers. Morrison, Hirsh, and Duggan (2003) askedadults to name pictures depicting an action and then performed a simulta-neous multiple regression on naming latency for each picture. They foundAoA and also a measure of name agreement predicted performance. Theyalso asked participants to name the verbs used in action pictures presentedvisually and found that AoA was the only significant predictor of verbnaming latency. Bogka et al. (2003) compared the effect of AoA on nam-ing pictures of objects and actions with English and Greek speakers. Theyfound significant effects of AoA on object and action naming in both lan-guages that were independent of correlated variables such as imageabilityand visual complexity. Schwier, Boyer, Meot, Bonin, and Laganaro (2004)also reported effects of AoA, name agreement, and image agreement onaction naming in French.

We know that action naming can be impaired in patients who havedementia and according to some writers verb naming is more impairedthan noun naming (Grossman et al., 2003). However, although there isconvincing evidence that AoA has an impact on object naming perfor-mance in dementia—including patients with progressive aphasia—it isnot known whether AoA has an effect on the action naming performanceof patients or if these effects are independent of correlated variablesincluding word frequency, word length (including the number of pho-nemes and syllables), familiarity, imageability and visual complexity.Here, we report for the first time an investigation of the effects of AoAon the object and action naming performance of a patient who has pro-gressive fluent aphasia.

Subject and methods

JP is a right-handed male who was 63 years of age at the time of test-ing. He is a retired professional with an estimated premorbid IQ in thehigh average range. JP presented with a two year history of progressivememory loss and fluent speech. He achieved a score of 25 on the MMSEand scored below the 10th percentile on tests of verbal and visual learning.JP’s performance on the NART was 2/50 correct and of the 25 itemsattempted his predominant error was a surface regularisation responsee.g. yacht -> yatched. His performance on the BDAE revealed surface dys-graphia e.g., physician -> fergision as often observed in patients withsemantic dementia JP’s performance on the Graded Naming Test was 0/15 correct and he produced semantic errors e.g., bear ‘‘is it a sheep?’’On Pyramids and Palm Trees he scored 34/52 correct.

Results and conclusions

In Experiment 1, we examined JP’s naming using footage of actionsand objects from a Verb and Noun Naming (VAN) Test (Webster & Bird,2000). All verbs were actions (n = 54) and all nouns were objects (n = 54).Items were presented individually and JP was given unlimited time torespond. In Experiment 2, we used the same procedure to test his namingof pictures from the Object and Action Naming Battery (Druks & Mast-erson, 2000). Results are summarized in Fig. 1.

ANOVA found no effects of word type (objects versus actions), image-ability, frequency or length on performance (p’s > .05). Contrary to expec-tations, there was no advantage for naming objects over actions (or viceversa). In Experiment 2, ANOVA found no effects of word type, image-ability, frequency or length on performance (all p’s > .05). However, amultiple regression analysis using values in Druks and Masterson (2000)for frequency, length, familiarity, imageability, visual complexity andAoA found that AoA (entered last) explained a significant 4% of variancein object naming F(1,79) = 4.59, p < .05 and a significant 9% of variance inaction naming F(1,49) = 6.19, p < .05. No other variable was significant(all p’s > .05). The results confirm that AoA has an effect on object namingand show that AoA also has an effect on action naming in progressive flu-ent aphasia.

Lambon-Ralph et al. argued that an effect of AoA on object naming inprimary progressive aphasia reflects the ease with which a lexical phono-logical representation can be activated. We found evidence that AoAhas an effect on object naming and this effect may emerge at a post-seman-tic level. For example, phonological representations may be organized in

doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2006.06.073

* Corresponding author. Fax: +44 1273 678611.E-mail address: B.S.Weekes@sussex.ac.uk (B.S. Weekes).

www.elsevier.com/locate/b&l

Brain and Language 99 (2006) 8–219

the lexicon according to age of acquisition making late acquired wordsmost vulnerable to brain damage (Rochford & Williams, 1962). Anotherpossibility is that the effects of AoA reflect the processes of retrieval fromsemantic memory. As many actions have several alternative names (e.g. tocut, slice, julienne) there may be more response competition among lateacquired lexical verb forms leading to the erroneous retrieval of an alter-native name. A more radical view is that AoA effects reflect the organisa-tion of concepts in the semantic system itself. There is evidence to supportthis hypothesis. Verbs are more complex than nouns both in grammaticalstructure and meaning. This difference in semantic complexity betweennouns and verbs can explain verb processing impairments in some demen-tia patients (Kempler, Curtiss, & Jackson, 1987; Kim & Thompson, 2004).Holmes, Fitch, and and Ellis (2006) investigated the effect of AoA on thesemantic categorization of pictures of objects and the naming of objects.Patients with Alzheimer’s disease showed an effect of AoA in object cate-gorization and a larger effect of AoA on picture naming accuracy com-pared to controls. Forbes-McKay, Ellis, Shanks, and Venneri (2005)also report that the AoA of words produced in semantic fluency discrim-inates patients with Alzheimer’s disease from controls. According to For-bes-McKay (2005) the effects of AoA on object naming may be useful inthe diagnosis of early dementia. The data from JP suggest that this claimmay be extended to action naming which we contend may actually be amore sensitive index of the impairments to the mappings between semanticmemory and phonological output that appear to deteriorate first in pro-gressive fluent aphasia. Laganaro, Di Piettro, and Schnider (2005) foundthat AoA can have an impact on the recovery of object naming in aphasicspeakers with implications for speech therapy. The present results raise thepossibility that AoA might also have an impact on the recovery of actionnaming deficits for patients with aphasia.

Acknowledgment

Supported by ESRC Grant no. R000223411.

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