Assessment of alerting, orienting, and executive control in persons with aphasia using the Attention Network Test.
Arianna N LaCroix, McKayla Tully, Corianne Rogalsky
PMID 34898801WHAT IT FOUND
People with chronic aphasia completed the Attention Network Test but were slower overall.
They gained less from spatial orienting cues on accuracy than controls, and their alerting benefit was not seen. This points to assessing alerting, orienting and executive control separately.
Key findings
0122 adults with chronic aphasia after a left hemisphere stroke at least 6 months before testing and 20 controls completed the Attention Network Test over 180 randomized trials, and the aphasia group was slower overall without an accuracy difference.
02In the aphasia group, spatial cues improved reaction times and conflicting arrows slowed reaction times, but double cues did not show the alerting benefit seen in controls.
03Compared with controls, people with aphasia gained less from spatial orienting cues on accuracy, but their reaction-time cue effects were not different.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Small group: 22 people with chronic aphasia and 20 controls, so results may not apply to people with aphasia less than 6 months after stroke, right hemisphere stroke, or other language backgrounds. No intervention was tested, so it cannot show that cueing or any treatment improves communication. The ANT reliability and validity in people with aphasia had not been established. Correlations were exploratory and needed caution because of the small sample. Reaction-time analyses removed incorrect and very slow responses, and the executive-control result depended partly on whether congruent or neutral trials were used as baseline. Because the aphasia group was slower overall, raw reaction-time comparisons may be hard to interpret; normalized scores also showed no group differences. Lesion location was not analyzed, so the study cannot link alerting or orienting findings to specific brain damage.
Declared interests
The authors report no potential conflict of interest; no sponsor role is described.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as proof that aphasia causes a general attention deficit or that cueing therapy will improve communication. The study did not test treatment, and many reaction-time cue effects did not differ between groups.