Cueing Effects of Picture Naming in Alzheimer\'s Disease

• Main Authors: Liao, Pei-Hsuan., 廖沛萱
• Other Authors: Lu, Ching-Ching
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/6f2348

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 臺灣語言研究與教學研究所 === 106 === Past research has suggested that the language ability of patients with dementia do not show obvious abnormalities in the early stage, but the naming ability may have been impaired; and whether the naming ability of the patients can be improved through cueing technique. This area of research in Taiwan is still lacking. The present study aims to clarify this question by examining the naming ability of 116 participants with different degrees of cognitive function. The study adopts the Chinese version of the 30-item Boston Naming Test (BNT-30) as a measurement instrument to collect the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) test scores of 50 average people, 27 patients with mild cognitive impairment, and 39 people with Alzheimer disease. Based on the MMSE test scores, the cognitive function was grouped from weak to strong: M1 (13-22 points), M2 (23-26 points), M3 (27-28 points), and the M4 (29-30 points). The study then carries out an in-depth analysis of the naming ability of the subjects with different degrees of cognitive function, the distribution of error types, the phonemic cueing effects, and the phonemic add semantic cueing effects. The research results showed that the M1 group (AD patients) with the weakest cognitive function had the worst naming ability, followed by the M2 group, then the M3 group, while the M4 group (with the highest proportion of the average person) attained the best naming ability of all participants. The research outcome suggests, in general, the weaker the cognitive function, the poorer naming ability, and the more naming errors were committed, and more times were required for phonemic cues and semantics add phonemic cues. The research outcomes also indicate that, in the spontaneous naming situation, the naming errors of M1, M2, and M3 group tend to concentrate on the types of "no response", " circumlocutory errors," and " coordinate errors," while M4 group naming errors are focused primarily in the "coordinate errors", "circumlocutory errors," and "unrelated errors." The result implies that the main naming error types between groups were not only quantitative but also qualitatively different. Regarding the impact of phonemic cueing on naming performance, the study found that before providing the phonemic cueing, the naming errors of each group were concentrated in "circumlocutory errors" and "coordinate errors." After phonemic cueing was present, the main response types of M1, M2, M3 groups were "correct" and "no response," while the main response types of the M4 group were "correct" and "unrelated errors." The experiment was carried out further to examine the impact semantic add phonemic cueing on naming performance. The study noticed that before presenting the semantic add phonemic cueing, the main error types of M1, M2, and M3 group were centered at “no response” while the main error type of M4 group was “unrelated errors”, after semantic add phonemic cueing was provided, the main response type of each group was "correct" and "no response". The finding reveals that the number of naming errors and the type of errors were reduced after the semantic cueing and semantic add phonemic cueing were presented. The effect of semantic cueing and semantic add phonemic cueing on AD patients (M1 group) appear not to be more pronounced than in other groups. The research result suggests that the degradation of semantic knowledge may be the main cause of the weakening naming ability of AD patients with weak cognitive function. Keywords: Alzheimer's disease, Chinese version of the 30-item BNT, cognitive function, phonemic cueing effect, semantic add phonemic cueing effect