De Marco, M

Quaranta, D

Vonk, JMJ

Frontiers in Psychology

Brunel University Research Archive

TYPE EditorialPUBLISHED 21 February 2023DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1152574OPEN ACCESSEDITED AND REVIEWED BYSara Palermo,University of Turin, Italy*CORRESPONDENCEMatteo De Marcomatteo.demarco@brunel.ac.ukSPECIALTY SECTIONThis article was submitted toNeuropsychology,a section of the journalFrontiers in PsychologyRECEIVED 27 January 2023ACCEPTED 31 January 2023PUBLISHED 21 February 2023CITATIONDe Marco M, Vonk JMJ and Quaranta D (2023)Editorial: The mechanistic and clinicalprinciples of item-level scoring methodsapplied to the category fluency test and othertests of semantic memory.Front. Psychol. 14:1152574.doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1152574COPYRIGHT© 2023 De Marco, Vonk and Quaranta. This isan open-access article distributed under theterms of the Creative Commons AttributionLicense (CC BY). The use, distribution orreproduction in other forums is permitted,provided the original author(s) and thecopyright owner(s) are credited and that theoriginal publication in this journal is cited, inaccordance with accepted academic practice.No use, distribution or reproduction ispermitted which does not comply with theseterms.Editorial: The mechanistic andclinical principles of item-levelscoring methods applied to thecategory fluency test and othertests of semantic memoryMatteo De Marco1*, Jet M. J. Vonk2 and Davide Quaranta31Department of Life Sciences, Brunel University London, London, United Kingdom, 2Department ofNeurology, Memory and Aging Center, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA,United States, 3Department of Neuroscience, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome, ItalyKEYWORDScategory fluency, item-based, semantic memory, Alzheimer’s disease, preclinicalEditorial on the Research TopicThe mechanistic and clinical principles of item-level scoring methodsapplied to the category fluency test and other tests of semantic memoryImplemented worldwide and based on quick and inexpensive methods ofadministration, standardized neuropsychological tests serve two main purposes. First,they are clinical instruments routinely used in diagnostic settings to characterize thecognitive profiles of single individuals. Second, they are methodological tools implementedin applied group/cohort-based research and in research aimed at elucidating mechanismsof normal and abnormal neurocognitive functioning. An important cognitive domainrelevant to both these purposes is semantic memory, a form of memory for facts, concepts,and the meaning of words that has shown theory-informed and diagnostically-exploitableassociations with the neuropathological and clinical features of Alzheimer’s disease (AD)(Quaranta et al., 2019; Vonk et al., 2020).Semantic memory can be measured with several tests, but one of the most well-known and popular tests for this domain is the category fluency test—naming as manyitems of a given category under time constraints. However, category fluency and othertests of semantic memory present a number of methodological aspects that may limittheir clinical effectiveness. First, performance on these tests is in part supported by othernon-semantic memory abilities that may be relatively spared by underlying pathologicalprocesses. Second, the efficiency of semantic memory processing depends on the integrityof encoding and retrieval abilities (as is the case for any memory sub-function), as well ason the wealth of knowledge that a person has accumulated throughout their life, and on theabilities of semantic control that are used to manipulate such knowledge. As a result, theconstruct validity of scoring procedures routinely used to quantify semantic memory testperformance (e.g., total word count in category fluency) may be suboptimal in describingsuch a multidimensional concept.Frontiers in Psychology 01 frontiersin.orgDe Marco et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1152574Based on these methodological limitations, novel item-level methods can represent a valuable complementaryapproach. A shift of focus from global counts to item-based features offers the opportunity to explore novel andmultifaceted scoring frameworks and can do so by relyingon inexpensive post-processing methods without alteringadministration procedures. Additionally, these same principlescan also apply to scoring other non-semantic memory teststo characterize the role played by semantic memory insupporting other functions, such as episodic memory. Thisarticle collection includes a selection of novel methodsand approaches that share a common goal: optimizing theresearch-based and clinical use of verbal fluencies and otherlanguage-based tests.In a concise position paper, Zemla reviewed the rangeof methodologies with which researchers have constructedmodels that capture the complexity of category fluency-informed semantic organization (with particular emphasis onmild cognitive impairment and AD). He particularly outlinedthe most substantial methodological issues that still needto be resolved, such as the lack of consensus over a set ofprocedural aspects.De Marco and Venneri analyzed category fluency performanceof 40 healthy adults and explored the neurofunctionalcorrelates of semantic indices calculated on a series of tenitem-based word properties. They associated item-level scoreswith the serial order of recall (i.e., the ordinal position ofeach word within its list) to define correlational scoresindicative of the tendency to generate increasingly difficultwords as the test progresses. They found that the abilityto generate words that are increasingly less frequent, lessdominant, and less interactable was associated with strongerexpression of the default mode network in regions deputed tosemantic control.Paek administered a verb/action fluency to asample of 17 cognitively healthy adults and 15individuals with AD, and found that participantstended to produce words of higher emotionalvalence, and that valence was negatively correlated tomemory performance.Rofes et al. explored the performance of verbal fluency usingsupervised-learning regression methods in a group of 50 HIV-positive Argentinian participants to test the effect of item-basedand inter-item category fluency descriptors on global categoryfluency scores. Participants’ performance was analyzed using threedistinct inferential models; across methods, cluster switching andthe interaction term between cluster switching and word frequencyshowed to be the strongest predictors of quantitative performance.A more complex and methodologically-rich approach wasdevised by Saranpää et al., who analyzed category fluencyperformance in 42 healthy controls, 24 individuals withamnestic mild cognitive impairment, and 18 individualswith early-stage AD. The authors reconstructed a semanticspace using a neural-network model known as “word2vec”and a series of data-reduction methods. After defining eightanimal sub-categories, the authors found that diagnostic statuswas predicted by word count and the number of returns topreviously-covered sub-categories. This finding indicates thatsingle items on category fluency are informative of how acategory is explored thematically, and that AD could alterthis exploration.Bushnell et al. analyzed a sample of 640 individuals enrolledin the REGARDS study presenting with cognitive difficulties (asestablished by their performance on a screening task) and anequal number of matched controls. Using telephone-based verbalfluency recordings, they applied various methods to quantifyclusters and switching during category and letter fluency. Inone of their inferential models based on logistic regressiondiscriminating between stable controls and progressive decliners,they found that the inclusion of speed scores when transitioningbetween connected and non-connected words offered a betterprediction than the sole use of word count, perseverations,and intrusions.Lastly, Mueller et al. applied item-level analyses beyondsemantic memory tests by retrospectively analyzing a cohortof over 1,100 cognitively unimpaired participants to investigatethe difficulty of items on the Logical Memory Test. Theyfound that delayed performance, compared to the immediaterecall, was based on the retrieval of more difficult items.They also reported that performance of individual items atdiscriminating between high and low performers was betterin the delayed phase of recall, hinting at the possibilitythat semantic complexity might contribute to memorability ofepisodic details. Along similar lines, the discrimination indexof several items was higher among amyloid-positive participantsthan amyloid-negative participants, suggesting that item-basedmemorability could be vulnerable to the pathological processesof AD.Overall, these articles provide an overview of theheterogeneity of the approaches with which item-basedproperties of semantic memory and other memory scorescan be operationalized and used in support of the traditionalscoring methods. These novel methods hold promise atbecoming valid methodological options that may be sensitiveto the pathological alterations due to AD and other forms ofcognitive impairment.Author contributionsMDM, JMJV, and DQ equally contributed to thewriting up, editing, and revision of the manuscript. Allauthors contributed to the article and approved thesubmitted version.Conflict of interestThe authors declare that the research was conductedin the absence of any commercial or financial relationshipsthat could be construed as a potential conflictof interest.Frontiers in Psychology 02 frontiersin.orgDe Marco et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1152574Publisher’s noteAll claims expressed in this article are solely those of theauthors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliatedorganizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and thereviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, orclaim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed orendorsed by the publisher.ReferencesQuaranta, D., Piccininni, C., Caprara, A., Malandrino, A., Gainotti, G., andMarra, C. (2019). Semantic relations in a categorical verbal fluency test: anexploratory investigation in mild cognitive impairment. Front. Psychol. 10, 2797.doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02797Vonk, J. M. J., Bouteloup, V., Mangin, J. F., Dubois, B., Blanc, F., Gabelle, A.,et al. (2020). Semantic loss marks early Alzheimer’s disease-related neurodegenerationin older adults without dementia. Alzheimers Dement DADM. 12, e12066.doi: 10.1002/dad2.12066Frontiers in Psychology 03 frontiersin.org

Editorial: The mechanistic and clinical principles of item-level scoring methods applied to the category fluency test and other tests of semantic memory

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Editorial: The mechanistic and clinical principles of item-level scoring methods applied to the category fluency test and other tests of semantic memory

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