Phonological facilitation effects on naming latencies and viewing times during noun and verb naming in agrammatic and anomic aphasia

Abstract

Background: Phonological priming has been shown to facilitate naming in individuals with aphasia, as well as healthy speakers, resulting in faster naming latencies. However, the mechanisms of phonological facilitation (PF) in aphasia remain unclear.Aims: Within discrete vs. interactive models of lexical access, this study examined whether PF occurs via the sub-lexical or lexical route during noun and verb naming in agrammatic and anomic aphasia.Methods & Procedures: Thirteen participants with agrammatic aphasia and 10 participants with anomic aphasia and their young and age-matched controls (n = 20/each) were tested. Experiment 1 examined noun and verb naming deficit patterns in an off-line confrontation naming task. Experiment 2 examined PF effects on naming both word categories using eyetracking priming paradigm.Outcomes & Results: Results of Experiment 1 showed greater naming difficulty for verbs than for nouns in the agrammatic group, with no difference between the two word categories in the anomic group. For both participant groups, errors were dominated by semantic paraphasias, indicating impaired lexical selection. In the phonological priming task (Experiment 2), young and age-matched control groups showed PF in both noun and verb naming. Interestingly, the agrammatic group showed PF when naming verbs, but not nouns, whereas the anomic group showed PF for nouns only.Conclusions: Consistent with lexically mediated PF in interactive models of lexical access, selective PF for different word categories in our agrammatic and anomic groups suggest that phonological primes facilitate lexical selection via feedback activation, resulting in greater PF for more difficult (i.e., verbs in agrammatic and possibly nouns in anomic group) lexical items.