Word-finding pauses in primary progressive aphasia (PPA): Effects of lexical category

Abstract

Word-finding pauses are common in logopenic primary progressive aphasia (PPA-L). However, no previous research investigated the distribution of word-finding pauses in PPA or their specificity to PPA-L. We coded pauses preceding nouns and verbs in narrative speech samples from participants with PPA-L, agrammatic (PPA-G) and semantic PPA (PPA-S), and controls, hypothesizing that frequent word-finding pauses, if present, should match previously-observed lexical category deficits (noun deficits in PPA-L and PPA-S; verb deficits in PPA-G).The PPA-L group paused more frequently before nouns than verbs, whereas no other group exhibited lexical category effects, suggesting that frequent word-finding pauses are specific to PPA-L