NAMING DISORDERS IN LOGOPENIC VARIANT OF PRIMARY PROGRESSIVE APHASIA

Abstract

Language functions, particularly disordered lexical skills were diagnosed in the examined woman based on selected diagnostic tests of the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE). Furthermore, an experimental version of the author's original test for assessing lexical-semantic performance in dementia was used. The author presents a case study of a 79-year-old woman diagnosed with logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA) secondary to Alzheimer’s disease. The author describes the symptoms of anomie manifested by the study participant and the supplementary strategies she applied in the case of lexical deficits. The analysis of the findings obtained in the course of language function assessment allowed the author to assess the fluency of speech, speech comprehension, repetition and naming. The study participant diagnosed with lvPPA was observed to manifest the following: an absence of motor speech disorders, absence of characteristics of evident agrammatism, preserved comprehension of individual words, preserved semantic knowledge of objects, disordered retrieval of words in spontaneous speech and in attempts to name, and disordered repetition of sentences and phrases. The analysis of the discussed case study allowed the author to discuss the progressive lexical deficits manifested by the lvPPA patient and to record those supplementary strategies that were most frequently applied in the lexical difficulties experienced by the female patient diagnosed with lvPPA.