One cat, Two cats, Red cat, Blue cats: Eliciting morphemes from individuals with primary progressive aphasia.
Melissa D Stockbridge, William Matchin, Alexandra Walker and 4 others
PMID 35002009WHAT IT FOUND
The MorGen test showed people with PPA produced morphemes less accurately than controls.
The variants did not differ overall, but colour was one morpheme that separated them; classification was best for the agrammatic variant.
Key findings
01Individuals with PPA performed more poorly than controls on MorGen morphemes.
02Colour was the only morpheme that separated PPA variants, with nfavPPA scoring 94.74±13.13 on the percent-correct scale.
03The agrammatic variant was classified with 70% accuracy.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only 46 people with PPA were analysed, and the nfaPPA group had only 10 people, so variant comparisons may be unstable. Unclassified PPA was excluded from some variant comparisons because of low numbers and mixed etiology. The control comparison used 37 controls over 55 years, and those controls were still younger than the PPA group. The authors note high individual variability made interpretation of the variant and morpheme pattern challenging. Some participants gave natural two-word answers such as 'a chair' instead of 'one chair', and these were scored as omissions of number, which may affect the number score. The study did not test whether MorGen results improve therapy decisions or patient outcomes. The nfavPPA group may have been less severely impaired, but only MorGen data were available for them.
Declared interests
The authors report no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude the MorGen separates all PPA variants. The variants did not differ overall, and only colour separated them; classification was best for the agrammatic variant at 70% accuracy.