Proper name retrieval in cognitive decline

Abstract

This study explores the retrieval of proper names and the sensitivity of this lexical category to the modulatory effect of cognitive reserve in an aging population. Thirty-two elderly patients, undergoing their first neuropsychological evaluation were matched for age and education to thirty-two healthy controls. All participants were administered the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) to measure their global cognitive performance, the Famous Face Naming test to assess proper name retrieval, and the Cognitive Reserve Index (CRI) questionnaire to obtain an index of cognitive reserve. The two groups had comparable CRI total scores, but patients’ performance was worse in both MoCA and Famous Face naming test, compared to healthy controls. Results showed that cognitive reserve predicted global cognitive performance (i.e., MoCA score) in the patients, but not in the healthy participants. Naming proper names was independent from cognitive reserve. This might be due to their lexical nature, which lies in a poor semantic connection between proper names and their bearers.

Cognitive Reserve and Its Effect in Older Adults on Retrieval of Proper Names, Logo Names and Common Nouns

“…Although deficits in picture naming task can be expected in the later stages of aging (see Feyereisen, 1997), cases of earlier name retrieval deficit are often reported, especially for the category of proper names (Greene and Hodges, 1996;Semenza et al, 2003). Whether CR can modulate proper name retrieval is a relatively recent question (Mondini and Semenza, 2016;Montemurro et al, 2018), which we want to address considering also the global cognitive conditions.…”

“…For assessing name retrieval of familiar faces, some other researches have considered very famous people from local and international cultural settings (e.g., political figures, famous actors, religious figures, etc. ), widely known outside their specific domain of fame (e.g., Semenza et al, 2003;Montemurro et al, 2018). In fact, persons with name retrieval deficits can find difficult to retrieve names of entities they know since long time.…”

“…Semenza et al (2003) have shown that one of the first signs of Alzheimer's dementia can be proper name anomia. However, Mondini and Semenza (2016) and Montemurro et al (2018) have later reported that proper name retrieval is hardly related to CR. Mondini and Semenza (2016) analyzed the performance of 40 mildly cognitive impairment patients and first showed that, whereas CR was positively correlated to better global cognitive profile as assessed by the MMSE, CR did not predict name retrieval of famous people in a paper pencil task (Semenza et al, 2003).…”

“…Authors interpreted this finding as due to the arbitrary link between proper names and bearers. Montemurro et al (2018) further investigated this phenomenon with a more controlled experimental setting. They used the Italian version (Conti et al, 2015) of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCa, Nasreddine et al, 2005), which is a more sensitive measure of global cognitive profile, in two groups of participants: healthy elderly and patients with dementia.…”

“…Darby et al (2017) showed that patients with Alzheimer's dementia and patients with mild cognitive impairment could benefit from CR in those tasks that require the involvement of executive and semantic functions. The semantic requirement might explain the weak relationship between CR and proper names (Montemurro et al, 2018). Indeed, semantic operations necessary for naming proper names may, at some point of the retrieval process, be different from naming other categories of names.…”