TY - JOUR

T1 - A behavioral study of the nature of verb-noun dissociation in the nonfluent variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia

AU - Costa Beber, Barbara

AU - Mandelli, Maria Luisa

AU - Santos-Santos, Miguel A

AU - Binney, Richard J

AU - Miller, Bruce L

AU - Chaves, Marcia

AU - Gorno-Tempini, Maria Luisa

AU - Shapiro, Kevin

N1 - 2018 Taylor & Francis. This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record.

PY - 2019/2/1

Y1 - 2019/2/1

N2 - Background: Patients with nonfluent/agrammatic variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA) have more difficulty producing verbs than nouns, but the reason for this discrepancy remains unclear. One possibility is that it results from impaired access to motor programs integral to semantic representations of actions. Another is that the disruption affects specific lexical or grammatical features of verbs. Aims: To use an oral picture naming task to examine the effects of motor associations on verb production in patients with nfvPPA. Methods & Procedures: We administered noun and verb naming tasks to 12 nfvPPA patients and 9 controls. We varied the manipulability of target items across categories as a proxy for the degree to which lexical access depends on motor knowledge. Outcomes & Results: Nonfluent PPA patients were significantly more impaired in both noun and verb naming compared to control participants. However, the nfvPPA patients were significantly more impaired in naming verbs than nouns, but there was no effect of manipulability. Conclusion: The results suggest that the verb naming deficit in nfvPPA is not directly related to impaired motor knowledge, and is more likely to be related to other properties that distinguish verbs from nouns.

AB - Background: Patients with nonfluent/agrammatic variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA) have more difficulty producing verbs than nouns, but the reason for this discrepancy remains unclear. One possibility is that it results from impaired access to motor programs integral to semantic representations of actions. Another is that the disruption affects specific lexical or grammatical features of verbs. Aims: To use an oral picture naming task to examine the effects of motor associations on verb production in patients with nfvPPA. Methods & Procedures: We administered noun and verb naming tasks to 12 nfvPPA patients and 9 controls. We varied the manipulability of target items across categories as a proxy for the degree to which lexical access depends on motor knowledge. Outcomes & Results: Nonfluent PPA patients were significantly more impaired in both noun and verb naming compared to control participants. However, the nfvPPA patients were significantly more impaired in naming verbs than nouns, but there was no effect of manipulability. Conclusion: The results suggest that the verb naming deficit in nfvPPA is not directly related to impaired motor knowledge, and is more likely to be related to other properties that distinguish verbs from nouns.

KW - Primary progressive aphasia

KW - grammatical dissociation

KW - naming

KW - nouns

KW - verb

U2 - 10.1080/02687038.2018.1461799

DO - 10.1080/02687038.2018.1461799

M3 - Article

VL - 33

SP - 200

EP - 215

JO - Aphasiology

JF - Aphasiology

SN - 0268-7038

IS - 2

ER -