Object and action picture naming in brain-damaged Persian speakers with aphasia

Abstract

Background: Individuals with aphasia can be impaired in action and object naming and most typically are more impaired when naming actions than objects. However, it is not clear if effects of grammatical class are language-general as assumed by some theories of speech production. Aims: We predicted greater impairments to action than object naming in persons with aphasia (PWA) in Persian. However, we expected any effect of grammatical class to be reduced when highly correlated variables are accounted for using generalised linear mixed-effects analysis. Methods & Procedures: PWA (n = 57) were presented with pictured actions (n = 80) and objects (n = 100) rated by 100 Persian speakers in a preparatory study for psycholinguistic variables such as familiarity, age of acquisition (AoA), imageability, name agreement and visual complexity. Outcomes & Results: 95% of PWA were more impaired on action naming than object naming. Rated AoA, name agreement, visual complexity and word length also significantly predicted naming accuracy for PWA and, there was an interaction between imageability and grammatical class such that imageability predicted object naming but not action naming. Conclusions: The effect of grammatical class on picture naming for PWA in Persian might be accounted for by differences in psycholinguistic characteristics of actions and objects. Although we doubt an independent effect of grammatical class on naming in Persian, we acknowledge that psycholinguistic variables can have differential effects on action and object naming in aphasia. We offer an account of spoken word production in Persian that assumes a functionally common pathway for naming actions and objects with no obvious constraint given by grammatical class.