Speciality Clinical Neuropsychology
Library of the School of Health Sciences

2020-09-24

2020

Nikitopoulou Zoi

Πόταγας Κωνσταντίνος, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Παπαγεωργίου Σωκράτης, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Ζαλώνης Ιωάννης, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ

Οι παύσεις και τα λάθη στην εκφορά του προφορικού λόγου σε ασθενείς με Πρωτοπαθή Προϊούσα Αφασία

Greek

Pauses and errors in speech in patients with Primary Progressive Αphasia

Different narrative conditions seem to be distinct mental works, as there are research data from both healthy speakers and pathological populations that show that their performance differs in terms of quantitative and qualitative characteristics of speech in each of them. For patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA), there are no studies focusing on language difficulties identified in different types of narrative. On the other hand, a number of studies investigate the profile of patients' speech difficulties, in various quantitative and qualitative measurements, using only one type of narrative, the results of which lead to different assumptions about the nature of these difficulties. As far as we know, there are no data on errors and pauses by Greek natural speakers with PPA while in the international literature there are few studies of pauses. The purpose of the dissertation is to study how errors and pauses differ into two distinct types of narration and more specifically, phonemic and semantic paraphasias in patients with PPA and whether the number and duration of pauses differ in patients and healthy speakers. It also aims to study the relationship between pause frequency and performance in the naming test. For the needs of the present study, 22 patients with primary progressive aphasia (14 men) and 17 healthy speakers (7 men) were assessed. Paraphasias for patients and pauses for patients and healthy speakers in two different narrative conditions (storytelling and picture description) were noted. Firstly, the frequency of phonemic and semantic paraphasias in the two types of patient narrative was compared. Then, the frequency and duration of pauses in patients and healthy participants in the two types of narrative were compared. Finally, the naming test was correlated with the frequency of pauses in the two narrative conditions. The results showed that the percentages of semantic and phonemic errors did not differ statistically from each other, while in the comparison between the types of narration, more semantic paraphasias were found in the condition of image description than in the storytelling. Comparison of pauses showed that patients showed increased duration and frequency compared to healthy speakers. Within the narrative conditions, separately for patients and healthy speakers, the pause duration varied considerably, with the healthy speakers producing significantly longer pauses in the disease storytelling and the patients in the image description. For the frequency of pauses, while the patients did not show significant differences between the conditions, the healthy ones showed significantly more pauses in the narration of the disease. Regarding the performance in the naming test, there was a significant positive correlation with the frequency of pauses only in the narration of the disease. Our findings are consistent with previous studies as there are higher rates of pauses and errors in patients. It also seems that the performance of the participants is influenced by the subject, the familiarity and the convenience of each condition. A positive correlation between pause frequency and naming test can probably be an indication of a compensatory mechanism. However, the main limitation was the small sample size and consequently the non-classification of patients into subtypes.

Health Sciences

Primary progressive aphasia, Pauses, Paraphasias, Discourse types

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https://pergamos.lib.uoa.gr/uoa/dl/object/2923220