Effects of Positive and Negative Emotions on Picture Naming for People With Mild-to-Moderate Aphasia: A Preliminary Investigation

Patterns of performance on the animal fluency task in logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia: A reflection of phonological and semantic skills

PURPOSE

This study aimed to characterize the quantitative (total number of correct words generated) and qualitative (psycholinguistic properties of correct words generated) performance patterns on the animal fluency task in individuals with the logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia and to investigate the influence of phonological and semantic abilities to these patterns.

METHODS

Fifteen participants with lvPPA and twenty neurotypical adults completed the animal fluency task and an assessment battery to characterize their phonological and semantic abilities. We recorded the total number of correct words produced and their psycholinguistic properties. Group differences were analyzed using independent samples t-tests and analysis of covariance. Stepwise and multiple linear regression analyses were implemented to investigate the contribution of psycholinguistic properties on word generation as well as the role of phonological and semantic abilities on performance. We also investigated the mediating role of phonological and semantic abilities on the relationship between relevant psycholinguistic properties and word generation output.

RESULTS

Compared to neurotypical controls, participants with lvPPA produced fewer correct responses and more words with lower age of acquisition. The total number of correct words generated was predicted by the age of word acquisition, such that individuals who generated more responses, produced words acquired later in life. Phonology and semantics influenced the number of correct words generated and their frequency, age of acquisition, and semantic neighborhood density. Familiarity and arousal were driven by semantic abilities. Phonological abilities partially mediated the relationship between age of acquisition and word generation output.

CONCLUSIONS

This study provides valuable insights into the performance patterns of the animal fluency task in lvPPA. Individuals with lvPPA with more intact phonological and semantic abilities generated greater number of words with more complex psycholinguistic properties. Our findings contribute to the understanding of language processes underlying word retrieval in lvPPA.

The effects of emotional stimuli on Word retrieval in people with aphasia

PURPOSE

Prior studies have shown that people with aphasia (PWA) have demonstrated superior language performance for emotional compared to nonemotional stimuli on a range of tasks, including auditory comprehension, verbal pragmatics, repetition, reading, and writing. However, studies on word retrieval, specifically, have suggested a possible interference effect of emotion on naming. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the emotional valence of stimuli on word retrieval in a series of naming tasks in PWA.

METHOD

Thirteen PWA and 13 neurotypical controls participated in four single-word naming tasks, including 1) object picture naming, 2) action picture naming, 3) category-member generation, and 4) verb generation. Each task included three valence sets of positively-, negatively-, and neutrally-rated pictures or words, which were obtained from the standardized International Affective Picture System (Lang et al., 2008) and the Affective Norms for Emotional Words (Bradley and Lang, 1999) databases. Accuracy and reaction time (RT) were measured and compared across groups, tasks, and valence sets.

RESULTS

Emotional stimuli, especially negative stimuli, resulted in worse naming performance, as measured by accuracy and RT, compared to nonemotional stimuli in PWA and neurotypical controls. This effect was relatively robust across the four naming tasks. In most cases, negative stimuli resulted in lower accuracy and slower RT than positive stimuli.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that stimulus valence may interfere with word retrieval for PWA and neurotypical adults and that this effect is robust across different types of naming tasks that vary by word class (nouns versus verbs) and stimulus type (pictures versus words). Negative stimuli resulted in worse naming performance than positive stimuli. These results suggest that emotionality of stimuli is an important variable to consider in word retrieval research.

A Scoping Review on the Effects of Emotional Stimuli on Language Processing in People With Aphasia

PURPOSE

Emotional stimuli have been shown to influence language processing (both language comprehension and production) in people with aphasia (PWA); however, this finding is not universally reported. Effects of emotional stimuli on language performance in PWA could have clinical and theoretical implications, yet the sparsity of studies and variability among them make it difficult to appraise the significance of this effect. The purpose of this scoping review was to (a) determine the extent and range of research examining the effect of emotional stimuli on language processing in PWA, (b) summarize and evaluate research findings, and (c) identify gaps in the literature that may warrant future study.

METHOD

PsycINFO, PubMed, Web of Science, and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature databases were systematically searched for articles that compared performance in response to emotional and nonemotional stimuli on at least one language measure in one or more adults with aphasia. Data related to methods and results were extracted from each article and charted in Excel.

RESULTS

Five hundred forty unique articles were found, and 18 articles, consisting of 19 studies, met inclusion/exclusion criteria for this review. Of the 19 studies included, 11 studies reported enhanced performance on a language task for emotional compared to nonemotional stimuli, seven reported no difference, and one reported worse performance for emotional compared to nonemotional stimuli. Possible modulating variables such as task type, measurement, stimulus characteristics, and sample characteristics are discussed along with gaps in the literature.

CONCLUSION

The extent of research in this area is sparse; however, there does appear to be some early evidence for better performance in response to emotional over nonemotional stimuli in PWA for some, but not all, language processes investigated.