Event Abstract Back to Event Phonological and visuospatial processing in lvPPA and mild AD Aaron Meyer1*, Sarah Snider1, Rachael Campbell1, Sally Long1 and Rhonda Friedman1 1 Georgetown University, United States The logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA) has been associated with impaired phonological short-term memory (STM; Gorno-Tempini et al., 2008). In contrast, people with mild Alzheimer’s dementia (AD) are thought to not have impaired phonological STM. Therefore, one would predict that people with lvPPA would score significantly lower than a matched AD group on tasks that require phonological STM, but not on tasks that require visuospatial STM. We tested this prediction in the current study. For tasks that are not widely available, the lvPPA group was also compared to unimpaired participants. Subjects. The lvPPA group consisted of 11 participants who were diagnosed based on the currently accepted criteria (Gorno-Tempini et al, 2011). The AD group consisted of 12 participants who were matched with the lvPPA group on age (lvPPA: M = 70.7, SD = 8.3; AD: M = 69.7, SD = 9.3), education (lvPPA: M = 17.3, SD = 1.6; AD: M = 17.0, SD = 1.9), and MMSE (lvPPA: M = 22.1, SD = 3.8; AD: M = 22.4, SD = 2.0). The unimpaired control group consisted of 16 participants who were matched on age (M = 71.2, SD = 9.6) and education (M = 17.6, SD = 1.5). A few participants from each group did not complete every task. Procedure. Participants with lvPPA and AD completed tasks requiring phonological STM: digit span, BDAE repetition subtests, pseudoword repetition, and reading and spelling of pseudowords and matched real words. They also completed tasks requiring visuospatial STM: spatial span and block design. The control participants completed the pseudoword and matched real word tasks. Results. The Mann-Whitney U Test was utilized for group comparisons. The lvPPA group scored significantly lower than the AD group on word repetition (p < .05), sentence repetition (p < .01), forward digit span (p < .01), backward digit span (p < .05), and scaled total digit span (p < .01). In contrast, there were no significant differences between these groups on scaled block design or forward, backward, or scaled total spatial span (all p’s > .05). The lvPPA group scored significantly lower on pseudoword repetition, compared to both the AD group (p < .05) and the controls (p < .01). For the reading and spelling tasks, difference scores were calculated by subtracting each participant’s word reading or spelling score from his or her pseudoword reading or spelling score (see Figure 1). Compared to the AD and control groups, the lvPPA group had a greater difference score for both tasks (lvPPA vs. AD: both p’s < .05; lvPPA vs. Controls, Reading: p < .05; Spelling: p < .01). These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that phonological STM is impaired in lvPPA. The logopenic participants were more impaired than the AD group on multiple tests requiring phonological STM. In contrast, there were no differences between these groups on tests requiring visuospatial STM. Figure 1 Acknowledgements Supported by grants R01 DC010780 and R01 DC011317 to RBF. References Gorno-Tempini, M. L., Brambati, S. M., Ginex, V., Ogar, J., Dronkers, N. F., Marcone, A. et al. (2008). The logopenic/phonological variant of primary progressive aphasia. Neurology, 71, 1227-1234. Gorno-Tempini, M.L., Hillis, A.E., Weintraub, S., Kertesz, A., Mendez, M., Cappa, S.F. et al. (2011). Classification of primary progressive aphasia and its variants. Neurology, 76, 1006-14. Keywords: PPA, Alzheimer's disease, phonological processing, Dementia, Aphasia Conference: Academy of Aphasia -- 52nd Annual Meeting, Miami, FL, United States, 5 Oct - 7 Oct, 2014. Presentation Type: Platform or poster presentation Topic: Not student Citation: Meyer A, Snider S, Campbell R, Long S and Friedman R (2014). Phonological and visuospatial processing in lvPPA and mild AD. Front. Psychol. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia -- 52nd Annual Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2014.64.00040 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 23 Apr 2014; Published Online: 04 Aug 2014. * Correspondence: Dr. Aaron Meyer, Georgetown University, Washington, United States, am2292@georgetown.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Aaron Meyer Sarah Snider Rachael Campbell Sally Long Rhonda Friedman Google Aaron Meyer Sarah Snider Rachael Campbell Sally Long Rhonda Friedman Google Scholar Aaron Meyer Sarah Snider Rachael Campbell Sally Long Rhonda Friedman PubMed Aaron Meyer Sarah Snider Rachael Campbell Sally Long Rhonda Friedman Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.