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A new test of action verb naming: normative data from 290 Italian adults

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Abstract

Introduction

Verbs and nouns can be selectively impaired, suggesting that they are processed, at least in part, by distinct neural structures. While several tests of object naming are available, tasks involving action verb naming with normative data are lacking. We report the construction and standardization of a new test for the assessment of picture naming of actions.

Material and methods

The test includes 50 stimuli, strictly controlled for several confounding variables. Normative data on 290 Italian subjects pooled across homogenous subgroups for age, sex, and education are reported.

Results

Multiple regression analyses revealed that age and education significantly correlated with the subject’s score. In particular, increasing age negatively affected performance, while the performance increased with a higher education.

Conclusions

In the clinical practice, the availability of equivalent scores will help the comparison with performance in the picture naming of objects. This test allows investigating action naming deficits in aphasic patients, in Parkinson’s disease patients and in further neurodegenerative disorders, in which a specific impairment of action verbs is expected, filling a gap in the clinical neuropsychological assessment.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Claudio Luzzatti for his contribution to the realization of this test.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CeRiN, CIMeC, University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy

    Costanza Papagno

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Costanza Papagno

  3. Unit of Oncological Neurosurgery, Humanitas Research Hospital, Rozzano, Milan, Italy

    Alessandra Casarotti

  4. Neurosurgery Unit, Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda-Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Milan, Italy

    Barbara Zarino

  5. International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Trieste, Italy

    Davide Crepaldi

Authors
  1. Costanza Papagno
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  2. Alessandra Casarotti
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  3. Barbara Zarino
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  4. Davide Crepaldi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Costanza Papagno.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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The study was approved by the local committee of the University of Milano-Bicocca

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Appendix

Appendix

To explain how to use the correction grid, we report an example of patient XZ, female, 60 years, 17 years of education, affected by non-fluent primary progressive aphasia. Her raw score was 44. Given her age and education, the raw score can be adjusted by subtracting 1.2 to the 44. The adjusted score is therefore 42.8, corresponding to an equivalent score of 2, which is a normal performance.

Table 4 Correction grid for action naming test
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Papagno, C., Casarotti, A., Zarino, B. et al. A new test of action verb naming: normative data from 290 Italian adults. Neurol Sci 41, 2811–2817 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-020-04353-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-020-04353-1

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