Influence of Image Complexity on Confrontational Naming Across Age Groups

Dysnomia is typically assessed during neuropsychological evaluation through visual confrontation naming. Responsive naming to description, however, has been shown to have a more distributed representation in both fMRI and cortical stimulation studies. While naming deficits are common in dementia, the relative sensitivity of visual confrontation versus auditory responsive naming has not been directly investigated. The current study compared visual confrontation naming and auditory responsive naming in a dementia sample of mixed etiologies to examine patterns of performance across these naming tasks. A total of 50 patients with dementia of various etiologies were administered visual confrontation naming and auditory responsive naming tasks using stimuli that were matched in overall word frequency. Patients performed significantly worse on auditory responsive naming than visual confrontation naming. Additionally, patients with mixed Alzheimer's disease/vascular dementia performed more poorly on auditory responsive naming than did patients with probable Alzheimer's disease, although no group differences were seen on the visual confrontation naming task. Auditory responsive naming correlated with a larger number of neuropsychological tests of executive function than did visual confrontation naming. Auditory responsive naming appears to be more sensitive to effects of increased of lesion burden compared to visual confrontation naming. We believe that this reflects more widespread topographical distribution of auditory naming sites within the temporal lobe, but may also reflect the contributions of working memory and cognitive flexibility to performance.

Cortical processing involved in seemingly similar tasks may differ in important ways. The authors mapped cortical regions engaged in a commonly performed picture naming task, seeking differences by semantic category. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used during presentation of standardized line drawings in 18 healthy right-handed female participants, comparing living versus nonliving entities. During visual naming, across categories there was strong activation of left frontal (BA45/47), bilateral temporo-occipital junction (BA19), and inferior temporal regions (BA36/37). Activation of right inferior temporal cortex (BA19 and BA37) was greater during naming of living versus nonliving category items. No category differences in activation strength in the left temporal lobe were observed. The authors conclude that visual semantic operations may involve visual association cortex in the right temporal lobe in women.

Purpose: Word retrieval deficits are among the earliest language impairments in mild neurocognitive disorder (Mild NCD), a transitional stage between healthy aging and dementia. This study aimed to examine group-based differences in confrontation naming performance between cognitively healthy older adults and individuals with Mild NCD. Methods: Sixty Tamil-speaking participants aged 60 and above were recruited and grouped into cognitively healthy controls (n = 30) and Mild NCD (n = 30), based on montreal cognitive assessment-Tamil, cognitive linguistic assessment protocol in Tamil and fifth edition of diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders criteria. Naming accuracy and latency were measured using, test of naming in Tamil, an E-naming tool developed in Tamil. Mann- Whitney U-tests were used to compare group performances. Results: Significant differences were observed between the groups. Healthy controls showed near-ceiling naming accuracy (97.99 ± 2.85%) and shorter latency (3,369.15 ± 1,096.39 ms), whereas individuals with Mild NCD had reduced accuracy (79.72 ± 9.49%) and prolonged latency (9,989.81 ± 2,887.82 ms), with <i>p</i> < 0.001 for both measures. Conclusion: Visual confrontation naming tasks, particularly when measuring both accuracy and latency, are sensitive to early lexical retrieval deficits in Mild NCD. These findings support their utility in culturally appropriate, early screening of cognitive-linguistic changes among aging Tamilspeaking populations.

Multiplicity 1: Subgroup analyses

This article expands the knowledge base available to sex researchers by reviewing recent evidence for sex differences in coincidence-anticipation timing (CAT), motor control with the hand and arm, and visual processing of stimuli in near and far space. In CAT, the differences are between sex and, therefore, typical of other widely reported sex differences. Men perform CAT tasks with greater accuracy and precision than women, who tend to underestimate time to arrival. Null findings arise because significant sex differences are found with easy but not with difficult tasks. The differences in motor control and visual processing are within sex, and they underlie reciprocal patterns of performance in women and men. Motor control is exerted better by women with the hand than the arm. In contrast, men showed the reverse pattern. Visual processing is performed better by women with stimuli within hand reach (near space) as opposed to beyond hand reach (far space); men showed the reverse pattern. The sex differences seen in each of these three abilities are consistent with the evolutionary selection of men for hunting-related skills and women for gathering-related skills. The implications of the sex differences in visual processing for two visual system models of human vision are discussed.

To make sense of the visual world, we need to move our eyes to focus regions of interest on the high-resolution fovea. Eye movements, therefore, give us a way to infer mechanisms of visual processing and attention allocation. Here, we examined age-related differences in visual processing by recording eye movements from 37 children (aged 6–14years) and 10 adults while viewing three 5-min dynamic video clips taken from child-friendly movies. The data were analyzed in two complementary ways: (a) gaze based and (b) content based. First, similarity of scanpaths within and across age groups was examined using three different measures of variance (dispersion, clusters, and distance from center). Second, content-based models of fixation were compared to determine which of these provided the best account of our dynamic data. We found that the variance in eye movements decreased as a function of age, suggesting common attentional orienting. Comparison of the different models revealed that a model that relies on faces generally performed better than the other models tested, even for the youngest age group (<10years). However, the best predictor of a given participant’s eye movements was the average of all other participants’ eye movements both within the same age group and in different age groups. These findings have implications for understanding how children attend to visual information and highlight similarities in viewing strategies across development.

Neuropsychology/Language/Behavior: Adult

Naming is considered a left hemisphere function that operates according to a posterior-anterior specificity gradient, with more fine-grained information processed in most anterior regions of the temporal lobe (ATL), including the temporal pole (TP). Word finding difficulties are typically assessed using visual confrontation naming tasks, and have been associated with selective damage to ATL resulting from different aetiologies. Nonetheless, the role of the ATL and, more specifically, of the TP in the naming network is not completely established. Most of the accumulated evidence is based on studies on patients with extensive lesions, often bilateral. Furthermore, there is a considerable variability in the anatomical definition of ATL. To better understand the specific involvement of the left TP in visual object naming, we assessed a group of patients with an epileptogenic lesion centered at the TP, and compared their performance with that of a strictly matched control group. We also administered a battery of verbal and non-verbal semantic tasks that was used as a semantic memory baseline. Patients showed an impaired naming ability, manifesting in a certain degree of anomia and semantically related naming errors, which was influenced by concept familiarity. This pattern took place in a context of mild semantic dysfunction that was evident in different types and modalities of semantic tasks. Therefore, current findings demonstrate that a restricted lesion to the left TP can cause a significant deficit in object naming. Of importance, the observed semantic impairment was far from the devastating degradation observed in semantic dementia and other bilateral conditions.

The mental representation of Verb–Noun compounds in Italian: Evidence from a multiple single-case study in aphasia

Human visual cognition differs profoundly between cultures. A key finding is that visual processing is tuned toward focal elements of a visual scene in Western cultures (US and Europe) and toward the background in Eastern cultures (Asia). Although some evidence for cultural differences exists for young children, to date, the ontogenetic origins of cultural differences in human visual cognition have not been unveiled. This study explores early cross-cultural differences in human visual processing, by tracking the neural signatures for object versus background elements of a visual scene in the electroencephalogram (EEG) of 12-month-old infants, in Vienna (Austria; a Western culture; n = 35) and Kyoto (Japan; an Eastern culture; n = 36). Specifically, we separated neural signatures by presenting object and background at different stimulation frequencies (5.67 and 8.5 Hz). Results show that human visual processing is different between cultures from early on. We found that infants from Vienna showed a higher object signal, in contrast to infants from Kyoto, who showed an accentuated background signal. This early emergence of cultural differences in human vision may be explained in part by early social experiences: In a separate interaction phase, mothers from Vienna pointed out object (versus background) elements more often than mothers from Kyoto. To conclude, with a cross-cultural developmental neuroscience approach, we reveal that cross-cultural differences in visual processing of object and background are already present in the first year after birth, which is much earlier than previously thought.

This investigation addresses the problem of attention in the processing of symbolic information from visual displays. Its scope includes the nature of attentive processes, the structural properties of stimuli that influence visual information processing mechanisms, and the manner in which these factors interact in perception. Our purpose is to determine the effects of configural feature structure on visual information processing. It is known that for stimuli comprising separable features, one can distinguish between conditions in which only one relevant feature differs among stimuli in the array being searched and conditions in which conjunctions of two (or more) features differ: Since the visual process of conjoining separable features is additive, this fact is reflected in search time as a function of array size, with feature conditions yielding flat curves associated with parallel search (no increase in search time across array sizes) and conjunction conditions yielding linearly increasing curves associated with serial search. We studied configural-feature stimuli within this framework to determine the nature of visual processing for such stimuli as a function of their feature structure. Response times of subjects searching for particular targets among structured arrays of distractors were measured in a speeded visual search task. Two different sets of stimulus materials were studied in array sizes of up to 32 stimuli, using both tachistoscope and microcomputer-based CRT presentation for each. Our results with configural stimuli indicate serial search in all of the conditions, with the slope of the response-time-by-array-size function being steeper for conjunction conditions than for feature conditions. However, for each of the two sets of stimuli we studied, there was one configuration that stood apart from the others in its set in that it yielded significantly faster response times, and in that conjunction conditions involving these particular stimuli tended to cluster with the feature conditions rather than with the other conjunction conditions. In addition to these major effects of particular targets, context effects also appeared in our results as effects of the various distractor sets used; certain of these context effects appear to be reversible. The effects of distractor sets on target search were studied in considerable detail. We have found interesting differences in visual processing between stimuli comprising separable features and those comprising configural features. We have also been able to characterize the effects we have found with configural-feature stimuli as being related to the specific feature structure of the target stimulus in the context of the specific feature structure of distractor stimuli. These findings have strong implications for the design of symbology that can enhance visual performance in the use of automated displays.

Comparison of acellular pertussis-diphtheria-tetanus toxoids and Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccines administered separately vs. combined in younger vs. older toddlers.

The longitudinal effects of age on confrontation naming using the 60-item Boston Naming Test (BNT) were studied in 541 "normal" elderly (ages 50-99). For participants with at least 4 annual assessments (n = 238), 150 were followed for > or =6 years, 81 for > or =8 years, and 43 for > or =10 years. A small practice effect (0.21 words, p = 0.06) and moderately high test-retest reliability were found when comparing the first 2 assessments, which were 9-15 months apart (r = 0.76, n = 353). Reliable change index scores indicated that an annual decline of > or =4 points on the BNT is needed for a statistically reliable decline in an individual. A gradient in the mean annual rate of change on the BNT was found with improvement in the 50s age group, no change in the 60s age group, and decline in the 70s and 80s age groups. When projected over 10 years, the magnitudes of the mean changes were relatively small, that is, a 1-word improvement for participants in their 50s and a 1.3-word decline for participants in their 70s. These findings demonstrate that lexical retrieval as measured by a visual object confrontation naming task is generally well preserved in aging with only subtle decline in the 7th and 8th decades of age.

During the fourth age (80+ years), cognitive difficulties increase. Although language seems to resist the advancement of age, an older person without pathological developments in cognition may exhibit deficits in lexical access. This study examines the restrictions on lexical access in people aged 80 and older in word recognition and retrieval modalities through four lexical tasks. The effect of aging on response time and accuracy was measured using recognition (lexical decision/naming/priming) and retrieval (picture naming) tasks. A fourth age group (>80) and two third age groups (60-69/70-79) were compared according to lexical access modality and type of task employed through linear regression models. People aged 80 and older exhibit a strong lexical access constraint, as they are slower and less accurate in recognizing and retrieving words than both third age groups. These restrictions are more profound for the word retrieval modality, especially in the picture naming task. Impaired fluid intelligence and internode transmission deficits during advanced aging could further reduce the ability to recognize and/or retrieve words, having an impact on access speed and accuracy. Furthermore, the idea that crystallized intelligence could strengthen the accuracy of lexical access during aging is supported, specifically in word recognition modality.

Age-related Differences in the Clinical Presentation, Associated Metabolic Abnormality, and Estimated Cardiovascular Risks from Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: A Cross-sectional Study from Health Evaluation Center in Taiwan