Profiling sentence repetition deficits in primary progressive aphasia and Alzheimer's disease: Error patterns and association with digit span

Ashleigh Beales; Anne Whitworth; Jade Cartwright; Peter K Panegyres; Robert T Kane

doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2019.03.001

Profiling sentence repetition deficits in primary progressive aphasia and Alzheimer's disease: Error patterns and association with digit span

Brain Lang. 2019 Jul:194:1-11. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2019.03.001. Epub 2019 Apr 3.

Authors

Ashleigh Beales¹, Anne Whitworth², Jade Cartwright², Peter K Panegyres³, Robert T Kane⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Occupational Therapy, Social Work, and Speech Pathology, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia. Electronic address: ashleigh.beales@postgrad.curtin.edu.au.
² School of Occupational Therapy, Social Work, and Speech Pathology, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
³ Neurodegenerative Disorders Research, West Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
⁴ School of Psychology, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.

PMID: 30953862
DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2019.03.001

Abstract

The use of sentence repetition tasks to distinguish dementia syndromes, particularly variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA), is receiving growing attention. Impaired sentence repetition is a core feature of logopenic variant PPA, although the underlying cognitive mechanisms of this impairment and its significance as a diagnostic criterion remain poorly understood. Sentence repetition abilities of 12 people with dementia, using an adapted error classification schema, were analyzed, along with digit span abilities, a measure frequently used to assess working memory capacity, to explore error patterns and correlations. Participants with semantic variant PPA showed the greatest performance on sentence repetition and digit span in comparison to the logopenic variant PPA and Alzheimer's disease participants. Sentence repetition errors were characterized by middle omissions for semantic variant PPA, ending omissions and phonological errors for logopenic variant PPA, and ending omissions and unrelated word substitutions for Alzheimer's disease. Significant correlations were found between sentence repetition and digit span abilities. Findings are discussed in relation to working memory capacity theories, specifically, the dual-component model.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease. sentence repetition; Logopenic variant; Primary progressive aphasia; Semantic dementia; Working memory.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Aged
Alzheimer Disease / physiopathology*
Aphasia, Primary Progressive / physiopathology*
Attention
Comprehension
Female
Humans
Male
Memory, Short-Term
Middle Aged
Speech*