Naming Difficulties Research Articles

Naming in aphasia: Interacting effects of form and function

The naming difficulties of Broca's and anomic aphasics were explored in relation to a recently developed model of the normal mental lexicon which stresses the importance of integrating perceptual and functional information in the act of naming, and equally stresses the inherent vagueness of conceptual categories based on such information. Subjects were shown line drawings of various food containers varying in physical features such as height and width; they were required to select a name for the object from a multiple choice list (cup, bowl, or glass). Prototypical as well as nonprototypical objects were shown. The Broca's aphasics showed relatively normal naming profiles. In contrast, the posterior patients were unable to integrate perceptual and functional information and were insensitive to the fuzzy boundaries between conceptual categories. The results obtained for the posterior patients are interpreted as reflecting an impairment in the underlying conceptual organization of the lexicon rather than retrieval difficulties.

The Role of Visual Image and Perception in Speech Development of Children With Speech Pathology

It is assumed that in children with various speech pathologies the naming function can be underdeveloped because of defects in the word's gnostic base. Our study revealed impairment in visual memory, perception, and visual representations of an object only in children with speech difficulties, whereas these functions were preserved in normal children of the same age. The children suffering from severe speech disorders (and particularly from naming difficulties) revealed more defects in visual perception and representations than in visual operational memory, which was grossly distorted in children with intellectual inadequacies. However, in this group, visual perception was impaired to a lesser degree. These results form the basis for methodological recommendations to begin rehabilitation of naming with development of the gnostic sphere.

Associative visual agnosia and its related deficits: The role of the minor hemisphere in assigning meaning to visual perceptions

A patient with severe associative visual agnosia for objects and pictures could identify those objects by touch and copy them; neither naming nor visual processing difficulties could account for his deficit. He was not alexic. The CAT scan revealed bilateral infarctions: a large left parietal-occipital lesion and a smaller right occipital lesion involving underlying white matter. Evidence suggests the presence of independent pathways for meaningful representation of objects and pictures, written material, familiar faces, and, perhaps, colors. Independence of these pathways at their origin indicates the right hemisphere is important in analyzing visual material beyond the perceptual level.

The “Tip-of-the-Tongue” Phenomenon in Aphasia

Forty-two male aphasics, classified as Broc's, Wernicke's, anomic, and conduction, were examined for their ability to partially retrieve acoustic features of words they could not provide in a confrontation naming task (the "tip-of-the-tongue" phenomenon). The results indicated that conduction aphasics were superior to Wernicke's and anomic asphasics in their ability to identify both the first letter and the syllabic length of the words they could not name. Since the aphasic groups were comparable in their naming difficulty, the findings could not be attributed to degree of wordfinding impairment. The difference between groups that were obtained using the TOT technique are discussed with regard to differences in the word finding process.

Étude sur le syndrome de disconnexion visuo-linguale après la transection du splénium du corps calleux: Troubles de la verbalisation des informations visuelles dans l'hémisphère mineur

According to the methods proposed by Gazzaniga et al. (1965, 1967), various visual-language associative functions were examined in 3 patients who had undergone the transection of the splenium of the corpus callosum for a pineal operation. Case 1 presented partial disturbance in reading aloud and also in colour naming in the left visual field with intact object naming capacity. Case 2 presented disturbances in reading aloud and in colour naming as well as partial object naming difficulty in the left visual field. Similar tests for Case 3 revealed disturbances in reading aloud and mild colour naming difficulty in the left visual field. His colour naming disturbance could be observed only by bilateral colour presentation tests, and the results of the unilateral colour presentation tests were normal. Visual matching tests revealed that the perception of, or the recognition of visual information in the left visual field were well preserved in spite of the inability to describe the information verbally. Present investigations did not support the view of Gazzaniga et al. (1967, 1971) that the right hemisphere can understand the meaning of written words. In the colour naming tests of bilateral simultaneous presentation, visual extinction-like phenomena were observed in the left visual field. Visual matching tests by bilateral simultaneous colour presentation revealed, however, that colour perception or recognition is perfectly preserved in both visual fields in spite of the apparent colour neglect in the left visual field.

The naming and recognition of written symbols in aphasic and alexic patients

A test consisting of sixty-six written symbols was administered to matched groups of controls, aphasic patients, and alexic patients. The test was designed to determine how the naming and recognition of symbols is affected in aphasia and whether the difficulties associated with alexia are restricted to verbal symbolic materials. Aphasics had more difficulty in symbol naming than control groups; posterior aphasics had more difficulty in recognizing symbols than anterior aphasics; alexic patients had considerable difficulty in naming and recognizing all symbolic categories. The relative difficulty of the various symbolic categories was consistent across all subject groups except the alexic subjects. The results are discussed in terms of the nature of naming, recognition, and reading of symbolic materials; the relationship between alexia and other disturbances of language and symbol use: the mechanisms which may mediate symbol processing under conditions of cortical injury.

Kanji Versus Kana Processing in Alexia with Transient Agraphia: A Case Report

A 43 year old, right-handed, Japanese school teacher exhibited the syndrome of alexia with transient agraphia as a result of a cerebrovascular accident (suspected infarction of the posterior cerebral artery of the left hemisphere). A detailed examination of the syndrome revealed among other things that two types of orthographic symbols in Japanese, kana (“syllabic” symbols) and kanji (“ideographic” symbols), were impaired in different manners, i.e., the patient used different strategies in trying to retrieve graph-meaning associations of words written in each type of symbols. The finding was interpreted to indicate that the processing of kana and kanji represents distinctively different modes of operations of linguistic behavior. The additional non-verbal symptoms exhibited by the patient included color naming difficulty, topographical disorientation, impairment in written calculation, and visuoperceptual and visuoconstructional disabilities. Most of these symptoms were transient in nature, however, and disappeared during the first few months after onset of illness.

The differential diagnosis of language in the brain-injured adult

This article discusses the differential language characteristics in patients with aphasia, generalized intellectual impairment, apraxia of speech, and confused language. Preliminary findings indicated the following: The aphasic group had the highest overall language impairment with particular difficulty in auditory retention span, naming, and fluency (reduced). The generalized intellectual impairment group had a mild impairment of all language functions. The apraxia of speech group showed minimal or no impairment in overall language functions with reduced fluency standing out as a differential feature. The confused language group showed a language impairment almost as high as the aphasics along with the striking characteristic of irrelevant responses. A brief review on aphasia testing is presented to indicate the evolvement of the kinds of tools available for making a differential diagnosis of the language impaired adult.

Recognition and naming of object-drawings by men with focal brain wounds.

The ability to name object-drawings, measured by score and response latency, was examined in men with chronic, focal brain lesions due to missile injury. The group with left hemisphere lesions was significantly impaired on both measures and this impairment was clearly related to the incidence of clinically detectable dysphasia. In contrast, the impairment of the bilateral group was not closely associated with dysphasia; it was characterized by long response latencies which exceeded the sum of unilateral deficits in the task. Analysis of response errors showed that both misnaming and misidentification occurred but were often dissociated. Difficulty in naming was noted in men with lesions involving the left temporal lobe. Misidentification was not common; it occured more frequently in the bilateral group, in men with lesions of the occipital areas of the brain. Dissociated deficits were also noted within the group of men with residual dysphasia.

Oral Verbalization as Interference in Running Memory

When Ss performing a running memory task had to speak aloud the name of a viewed symbol that was to be matched with a previously seen symbol, a significant increase in errors was produced. The control condition was the same task performed without oral naming of the viewed symbol. Since both running memory conditions required exact identification of the viewed symbol, the error increase was attributed to the requirement of speaking aloud rather than to any cognitive difficulty in symbol naming. Comparison of the above 2 conditions with 3 other interference conditions showed that the error increase from oral symbol naming was about as large as the error increase from conditions that required Ss to perform activities irrelevant to the memory task or from a condition which decreased the time to perform each memory match by 1 sec.

Perceptual Factors in the Pathogenesis of Anomia

Nine anomic patients were requested to name three types of pictures of decreasing perceptual redundancy: 10 realistic pictures, 10 outlined pictures and 10 “mutilated” pictures. Naming of realistic pictures was found to be the least impaired. Data suggest that, in anomic patients, the naming difficulty varies, within certain limits, with the amount of information transmitted through the visual channel. The hypothesis is advanced that anomia is at least partly conditioned by factors acting at the level of the mechanisms of interaction between the sensory analyzer and the verbal sphere.