ABSTRACT

Background and Aims

Previous studies have shown that age of acquisition affects language production in persons with aphasia (PWA), specifically, earlier-acquired words are better preserved compared to later-learned ones (for review, see Brysbaert & Ellis, 2016). Also, it has been argued that naming objects with lower name agreement requires inhibition of alternative names (Alario et al., 2004), and therefore puts higher demands on cognitive control. Bose and Schafer (2017) showed that although both PWA and healthy controls performed better at naming words with high naming agreement, the difference between the naming conditions was significantly greater for PWA. This could be due to reduced ability to inhibit irrelevant information in PWA. The current study aims to investigate whether cognitive control mediates the effects of psycholinguistic variables on object naming accuracy in aphasia.

Methods and Procedures

Participants (N = 31, 32% female) were right-handed, native Russian speakers with preserved visual and hearing abilities diagnosed with mild to moderate post-stroke aphasia. They were aged 40–70 (mean = 59.5, SD = 8.6). The participants were tested on a picture-naming task including 247 items and 2 subtests from the Russian Birmingham Cognitive Screen, namely Auditory attention, and Rule Finding tasks.

Outcomes and Results

To define whether cognitive control mediates the effect of psycholinguistic variables on naming response accuracy, multiple linear regression was used. Significant main effects of log-transformed word frequency, AoA, and cognitive control were found, as well as a significant interaction between log-transformed word frequency and cognitive control.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that cognitive control mediated the effect of word frequency in naming in aphasia. PWA with weaker cognitive control name pictures depicting less-frequent words less accurately than more frequent words. This points to the fact that PWA have difficulty in lexical access when producing language. The implications of the study are that the focus of aphasia rehabilitation should be on very frequent structures and words as these are usually more preserved in PWA with weaker cognitive control.

中文翻译：

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失语症对象命名的预测因子：认知控制是否调节心理语言变量的影响？

摘要

背景和目标

以前的研究表明，习得年龄会影响失语症 (PWA) 患者的语言生产，具体而言，较早习得的单词比晚习得的单词保存得更好（综述见 Brysbaert & Ellis, 2016）。此外，有人认为，使用较低名称一致性命名对象需要抑制替代名称（Alario 等，2004），因此对认知控制提出了更高的要求。玻色和谢弗（2017) 表明，尽管 PWA 和健康对照在命名具有高命名一致性的单词方面表现更好，但 PWA 的命名条件之间的差异显着更大。这可能是由于在 PWA 中抑制无关信息的能力降低。目前的研究旨在调查认知控制是否介导了心理语言变量对失语症对象命名准​​确性的影响。

方法和程序

参与者 ( N = 31, 32% 女性) 是右利手、以俄语为母语的人，他们的视觉和听觉能力被诊断为轻度至中度中风后失语症。他们的年龄在 40-70 岁之间（平均值 = 59.5，SD  = 8.6）。参与者接受了一项图片命名任务的测试，包括来自俄罗斯伯明翰认知屏幕的 247 个项目和 2 个子测试，即听觉注意和规则发现任务。

结果和结果

为了确定认知控制是否介导心理语言变量对命名反应准确性的影响，使用了多元线性回归。发现了对数转换词频、AoA 和认知控制的显着主效应，以及对数转换词频和认知控制之间的显着交互作用。

结论

我们的研究结果表明，认知控制介导了词频对失语症命名的影响。PWA 具有较弱的认知控制名称图片，描述不太频繁的单词不如更频繁的单词准确。这表明 PWA 在生成语言时难以进行词汇访问。该研究的意义在于失语症康复的重点应该放在非常频繁的结构和单词上，因为这些结构和单词通常在 PWA 中保留得更多，而认知控制较弱。