Semantic and lexical features of words dissimilarly affected by non-fluent, logopenic, and semantic primary progressive aphasia

Jet M.J. Vonk; Roel Jonkers; H. Isabel Hubbard; Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini; Adam M. Brickman; Loraine K. Obler

doi:10.1017/S1355617719000948

Semantic and lexical features of words dissimilarly affected by non-fluent, logopenic, and semantic primary progressive aphasia

Jet M.J. Vonk
, Roel Jonkers
, H. Isabel Hubbard
, Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini
, Adam M. Brickman
, Loraine K. Obler

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

Objective: To determine the effect of three psycholinguistic variables - lexical frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and neighborhood density (ND) - on lexical-semantic processing in individuals with non-fluent (nfvPPA), logopenic (lvPPA), and semantic primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). Identifying the scope and independence of these features can provide valuable information about the organization of words in our mind and brain.Method: We administered a lexical decision task - with words carefully selected to permit distinguishing lexical frequency, AoA, and orthographic ND effects - to 41 individuals with PPA (13 nfvPPA, 14 lvPPA, 14 svPPA) and 25 controls.Results: Of the psycholinguistic variables studied, lexical frequency had the largest influence on lexical-semantic processing, but AoA and ND also played an independent role. The results reflect a brain-language relationship with different proportional effects of frequency, AoA, and ND in the PPA variants, in a pattern that is consistent with the organization of the mental lexicon. Individuals with nfvPPA and lvPPA experienced an ND effect consistent with the role of inferior frontal and temporoparietal regions in lexical analysis and word form processing. By contrast, individuals with svPPA experienced an AoA effect consistent with the role of the anterior temporal lobe in semantic processing.Conclusions: The findings are in line with a hierarchical mental lexicon structure with a conceptual (semantic) and a lexeme (word-form) level, such that a selective deficit at one of these levels of the mental lexicon manifests differently in lexical-semantic processing performance, consistent with the affected language-specific brain region in each PPA variant.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1011-1022
Number of pages	12
Journal	Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society
Volume	25
Issue number	10
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355617719000948
State	Published - Nov 1 2019

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright INS. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Funding

We are immensely grateful to Bruce Miller and the members of the ALBA Language Neurobiology Lab at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) Memory and Aging Center for their and the participants’ availability, and for their material and intellectual support of this study. This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health (Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini, NINDS R01 NS050915; Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini, NIDCD K24 DC015544; Bruce Miller, NIA P50 AG023501) and Alzheimer Nederland (with a grant for international exchange to Jet M. J. Vonk). We would like to thank Kate Dawson, Zahra Hejazi, Eve Higby, Ted Huey, Aviva Lerman, Iris Strangmann, and Amy Vogel-Eyny for their thoughts and comments on previous versions of the manuscript, and Elaine Allen and Cas Kruitwagen for consulting on the statistical analysis.

Funders	Funder number
Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
National Institute on Aging	P50 AG023501
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders	K24DC015544
Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council	R01 NS050915

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 3 Good Health and Well-being

Keywords

Age of acquisition
Dementia
Lexical frequency
Mental lexicon
Neighborhood density
Psycholinguistics
Word processing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Neuroscience
Clinical Psychology
Clinical Neurology
Psychiatry and Mental health

Access to Document

10.1017/S1355617719000948

Cite this

@article{865df10980094326867d643f73df0427,

title = "Semantic and lexical features of words dissimilarly affected by non-fluent, logopenic, and semantic primary progressive aphasia",

abstract = "Objective: To determine the effect of three psycholinguistic variables - lexical frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and neighborhood density (ND) - on lexical-semantic processing in individuals with non-fluent (nfvPPA), logopenic (lvPPA), and semantic primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). Identifying the scope and independence of these features can provide valuable information about the organization of words in our mind and brain.Method: We administered a lexical decision task - with words carefully selected to permit distinguishing lexical frequency, AoA, and orthographic ND effects - to 41 individuals with PPA (13 nfvPPA, 14 lvPPA, 14 svPPA) and 25 controls.Results: Of the psycholinguistic variables studied, lexical frequency had the largest influence on lexical-semantic processing, but AoA and ND also played an independent role. The results reflect a brain-language relationship with different proportional effects of frequency, AoA, and ND in the PPA variants, in a pattern that is consistent with the organization of the mental lexicon. Individuals with nfvPPA and lvPPA experienced an ND effect consistent with the role of inferior frontal and temporoparietal regions in lexical analysis and word form processing. By contrast, individuals with svPPA experienced an AoA effect consistent with the role of the anterior temporal lobe in semantic processing.Conclusions: The findings are in line with a hierarchical mental lexicon structure with a conceptual (semantic) and a lexeme (word-form) level, such that a selective deficit at one of these levels of the mental lexicon manifests differently in lexical-semantic processing performance, consistent with the affected language-specific brain region in each PPA variant.",

keywords = "Age of acquisition, Dementia, Lexical frequency, Mental lexicon, Neighborhood density, Psycholinguistics, Word processing",

author = "Vonk, \{Jet M.J.\} and Roel Jonkers and Hubbard, \{H. Isabel\} and Gorno-Tempini, \{Maria Luisa\} and Brickman, \{Adam M.\} and Obler, \{Loraine K.\}",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} Copyright INS. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2019.",

year = "2019",

month = nov,

day = "1",

doi = "10.1017/S1355617719000948",

language = "English",

volume = "25",

pages = "1011--1022",

number = "10",

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TY - JOUR

T1 - Semantic and lexical features of words dissimilarly affected by non-fluent, logopenic, and semantic primary progressive aphasia

AU - Vonk, Jet M.J.

AU - Jonkers, Roel

AU - Hubbard, H. Isabel

AU - Gorno-Tempini, Maria Luisa

AU - Brickman, Adam M.

AU - Obler, Loraine K.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © Copyright INS. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2019.

PY - 2019/11/1

Y1 - 2019/11/1

N2 - Objective: To determine the effect of three psycholinguistic variables - lexical frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and neighborhood density (ND) - on lexical-semantic processing in individuals with non-fluent (nfvPPA), logopenic (lvPPA), and semantic primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). Identifying the scope and independence of these features can provide valuable information about the organization of words in our mind and brain.Method: We administered a lexical decision task - with words carefully selected to permit distinguishing lexical frequency, AoA, and orthographic ND effects - to 41 individuals with PPA (13 nfvPPA, 14 lvPPA, 14 svPPA) and 25 controls.Results: Of the psycholinguistic variables studied, lexical frequency had the largest influence on lexical-semantic processing, but AoA and ND also played an independent role. The results reflect a brain-language relationship with different proportional effects of frequency, AoA, and ND in the PPA variants, in a pattern that is consistent with the organization of the mental lexicon. Individuals with nfvPPA and lvPPA experienced an ND effect consistent with the role of inferior frontal and temporoparietal regions in lexical analysis and word form processing. By contrast, individuals with svPPA experienced an AoA effect consistent with the role of the anterior temporal lobe in semantic processing.Conclusions: The findings are in line with a hierarchical mental lexicon structure with a conceptual (semantic) and a lexeme (word-form) level, such that a selective deficit at one of these levels of the mental lexicon manifests differently in lexical-semantic processing performance, consistent with the affected language-specific brain region in each PPA variant.

AB - Objective: To determine the effect of three psycholinguistic variables - lexical frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and neighborhood density (ND) - on lexical-semantic processing in individuals with non-fluent (nfvPPA), logopenic (lvPPA), and semantic primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). Identifying the scope and independence of these features can provide valuable information about the organization of words in our mind and brain.Method: We administered a lexical decision task - with words carefully selected to permit distinguishing lexical frequency, AoA, and orthographic ND effects - to 41 individuals with PPA (13 nfvPPA, 14 lvPPA, 14 svPPA) and 25 controls.Results: Of the psycholinguistic variables studied, lexical frequency had the largest influence on lexical-semantic processing, but AoA and ND also played an independent role. The results reflect a brain-language relationship with different proportional effects of frequency, AoA, and ND in the PPA variants, in a pattern that is consistent with the organization of the mental lexicon. Individuals with nfvPPA and lvPPA experienced an ND effect consistent with the role of inferior frontal and temporoparietal regions in lexical analysis and word form processing. By contrast, individuals with svPPA experienced an AoA effect consistent with the role of the anterior temporal lobe in semantic processing.Conclusions: The findings are in line with a hierarchical mental lexicon structure with a conceptual (semantic) and a lexeme (word-form) level, such that a selective deficit at one of these levels of the mental lexicon manifests differently in lexical-semantic processing performance, consistent with the affected language-specific brain region in each PPA variant.

KW - Age of acquisition

KW - Dementia

KW - Lexical frequency

KW - Mental lexicon

KW - Neighborhood density

KW - Psycholinguistics

KW - Word processing

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U2 - 10.1017/S1355617719000948

DO - 10.1017/S1355617719000948

M3 - Article

C2 - 31511121

AN - SCOPUS:85072180668

SN - 1355-6177

VL - 25

SP - 1011

EP - 1022

JO - Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society

JF - Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society

IS - 10

ER -

Semantic and lexical features of words dissimilarly affected by non-fluent, logopenic, and semantic primary progressive aphasia

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

UN SDGs

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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