Auditory confrontation naming in alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Naming is a fundamental aspect of language and is virtually always assessed with visual confrontation tests. Tests of the ability to name objects by their characteristic sounds would be particularly useful in the assessment of visually impaired patients, and may be particularly sensitive in Alzheimer's disease (AD). We developed an auditory naming task, requiring the identification of the source of environmental sounds (i.e., animal calls, musical instruments, vehicles) and multiple-choice recognition of those not identified. In two separate studies mild-to-moderate AD patients performed more poorly than cognitively normal elderly on the auditory naming task. This task was also more difficult than two versions of a comparable visual naming task, and correlated more highly with Mini-Mental State Exam score. Internal consistency reliability was acceptable, although ROC analysis revealed auditory naming to be slightly less successful than visual confrontation naming in discriminating AD patients from normal participants. Nonetheless, our auditory naming task may prove useful in research and clinical practice, especially with visually impaired patients.

Keywords:

• Naming
• Alzheimer's disease
• Test development

Acknowledgments

This research was supported, in part, by grants P50 AG005146 and RO1 MH60626 from the National Institutes of Health. The authors thank Mark Macek, Quincy Samus, and Janeen Marshall for assistance with data collection.