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Background: The presence of naming difficulties in Parkinson’s Disease (PD), especially object naming difficulties, as well as the associated cognitive difficulties, remains a controversial topic.A...

Resumen Introduccion En este estudio se explora la forma en que el envejecimiento afecta a la produccion del habla. Indudablemente, son muchos los cambios que se producen a edades avanzadas en los procesos de control motor, asi como en la integridad de los musculos laringeos y supralaringeos, y que pueden afectar a la produccion del habla. Sin embargo, hay pocos trabajos que examinen estas capacidades en el marco del envejecimiento saludable, especialmente en personas de habla francesa. Material y metodos Nos hemos centrado en el voice onset time (VOT) o tiempo de inicio de la sonoridad, una pista del habla especialmente relevante para el estudio de la coordinacion temporal y espacial entre los gestos laringeos y supralaringeos. Han participado cuatro grupos de personas francofonas de las siguientes franjas de edad: 40-49, 50-59, 60-69 y 70-79. Se les propuso una tarea de repeticion de pseudopalabras, que incluia las seis oclusivas sonoras y sordas que existen en frances: /p, t, k, b, d, g/. Resultados Los resultados arrojan una mayor duracion de las pseudopalabras, a partir de los 70 anos, F(3,847) = 3,52, p = 0,02, probablemente debido a la ralentizacion de los movimientos del habla. En la franja etaria 70-79, se detectaron problemas adicionales al iniciar y mantener la sonoridad durante la oclusion. Esto tuvo como consecuencia un VOT mas breve (presonoridad retrasada), F(3,848) = 5,23, p = 0,001, asi como una sonoridad incompleta (interrupcion de la sonoridad antes de la apertura) de una oclusiva sonora a inicio de palabra /b, d, g/, F(3,422) = 3,01, p = 0,03, lo cual, a su vez, conlleva una diferencia menor en cuanto al VOT entre las categorias fonologicas sonora y sorda. Discusion Estos resultados apuntan a dificultades en la coordinacion de los movimientos articulatorios que podrian indicar un declive en el control motor del habla asociado con la edad.

The aim of the present study is to contribute to the description of the speech production deficits in French-speaking aphasic patients, so as to shed light on their potential phonetic and/or phonological disorders. Acoustic studies of aphasics' speech productions remain relatively infrequent, especially in French, and when entering into the specifics, often lead to inconsistent results. We conducted a multiple-case study on six aphasic patients, four with non-fluent aphasia and two with fluent aphasia. They were administered a variety of language and neuropsychological tasks, then they participated in a customized non-word repetition task. Acoustic analyses of their speech productions were performed, focussing on VOT as the main acoustic correlate of the voicing contrast for oral stops. Other atypicalities in their productions were also classified. Results showed variable and mainly "mixed" phonetic-phonological impairment profiles that differed from the traditional hypotheses made in the literature about the speech deficits to be expected as a function of type of aphasia. Our results support the use of acoustic analyses in order to complete language examination in aphasic patients but also suggest that the frontier between phonological and phonetic impairment is not clear-cut. These outcomes are better accounted for by theories and models postulating close relationships between the phonological and phonetic levels of processing.

This study aimed at exploring the effects of aging on the multiple components of the auditory-verbal short-term memory (STM). Participants of 45–54, 55–64, 65–74 and 75–84 years of age were presented STM tasks assessing short-term retention of order and item information, and of phonological and lexical-semantic information separately. Because older participants often present reduced hearing levels, we sought to control for an effect of hearing status on performance on STM tasks. Participants’ hearing thresholds were measured with a pure-tone audiometer. The results showed age-related effects on all STM components. However, after hearing status was controlled for in analyses of covariance, the age-related differences became non-significant for all STM processes. The fact that age-related hearing loss may in large part explain decreases in performance on STM tasks with aging is discussed.

The aim of this study is to assess the impact of hearing status on age-related decrease in verbal short-term memory (STM) performance. This was done by administering a battery of verbal STM tasks to elderly and young adult participants matched for hearing thresholds, as well as to young normal-hearing control participants. The matching procedure allowed us to assess the importance of hearing loss as an explanatory factor of age-related STM decline. We observed that elderly participants and hearing-matched young participants showed equal levels of performance in all verbal STM tasks, and performed overall lower than the normal-hearing young control participants. This study provides evidence for recent theoretical accounts considering reduced hearing level as an important explanatory factor of poor auditory-verbal STM performance in older adults.

This study assesses the dissociability of phonological and lexical-semantic short-term memory (STM) in two aphasic patients, B.N. and T.M., and explores the relationship between their STM deficits and their word production impairment. Picture naming performance suggests phonological language production impairment in B.N. and lexical-semantic language production impairment in T.M. On STM tasks, B.N. presented phonological STM impairment with preserved lexical-semantic STM, while T.M. presented the reverse profile. These results reveal a double dissociation between phonological and lexical-semantic STM capacities and suggest that our patients' STM impairment may be selectively related to their language production deficits.

The aim of this study was to determine whether naming difficulties arise in individuals as young as their 50s. Participants of 25–35, 50–59, 60–69, and above 70 years of age were given a picture naming task. To uncover subtle naming difficulties, latencies were analyzed in addition to accuracy. To control whether the expected slower naming latencies could be due to a general slowing affecting all cognitive tasks, participants were also given an odd/even judgment task to assess cognitive processing speed. The results confirmed that participants in their 50s presented decline in naming performance, reflected by an increase in naming latencies, whereas adults in their 60s and their 70s showed both a decrease in accuracy and an increase in latency. Moreover, the increase in naming latencies remained significant even after controlling for odd/even judgment latencies, suggesting a degradation specific to the picture naming task. We assumed that these slower latencies may result from a language-specific impairment. As a further test for language-specific degradation, participants’ semantic capacities were also assessed with a synonym judgment task and the Pyramids and Palm Trees test. The above-70 group showed semantic degradation. The contributions of multiple factors to naming difficulties in aging are discussed. (JINS, 2013, 19, 1–8)