Assessment of Reading and Writing Impairments in Spanish-Speaking Patients with Semantic Variant Primary Progressive Aphasia

MORELLO GARCÍA, FLORENTINA; DIFALCIS, MICAELA; LEIVA, SAMANTA; ALLEGRI, RICARDO; FERRERES, ALDO RODOLFO

Congreso; INS 2021 San Diego Virtual Event; 2021

International Neuropsychological Society

Objective: Diagnostic criteria for semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) include the presence of acquired surface dyslexia or dysgraphia. The study of these impairments in Spanish-speaking patients is incipient, affecting diagnosis. In addition, the diagnostic consensus recommends certain tasks. For acquired dysgraphia it is possible to follow these guidelines since heterographic homophony is one of the characteristics of Spanish so writing is considerably irregular. However, most Spanish words are regular for reading, therefore, other tasks should be used to assess acquired dyslexia. The aim of this study is to report the usefulness of a set of tests that would allow the identification of acquired surface dyslexia and dysgraphia in Spanish-speaking patients with svPPA. Participants and methods: Single-case study of a Spanish-speaking patient with imaging-supported svPPA (predominant left temporal lobe atrophy, affecting temporal pole and medial temporal lobe). Tests used: reading of words and nonwords (accuracy and reaction times), lexical decision with pseudohomophones, homophone comprehension and writing to dictation of words and nonwords. Results: Results obtained are compatible with acquired surface dyslexia and dysgraphia: loss of lexical advantage in reaction times although conserved reading accuracy, pseudohomophone effect in lexical decision, low perfomance in homophone comprehension, regularity effect in writing to dictation with generation of phonologically plausibleerrors and preserved performance in nonwords. Conclusions: Reading of words and nonwords and lexical decision with pseudohomophones are useful tests for identification of acquired surface dyslexia in svPPA. The good reading accuracy of the patient with the loss of lexical advantage inreaction times can be interpreted as the result of an alteration in the reading lexical route. Moreover,pseudohomophone effect evidences that the patient performed lexical decision task through phonological mediation, which also provides data in favor of a lexical-orthographic alteration. Homophone comprehension task is not suitable for svPPA since it is not possible to define whether low performance is due to difficulties in lexical-orthographic information or semantic impairments. With regards to acquired surface dysgraphia, the use of writing to dictation that manipulates the lexicality and regularity of the stimuli is sufficient. In conclusion, our results evidence that is possible to test all the svPPA diagnostic criteria in Spanish-speaking patients.