Phonological Facilitation of Object Naming in Agrammatic and Logopenic Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA): Evidence for a Phonological Processing Deficit

Naming is a pervasive deficit in primary progressive aphasia. However, the source of such deficits across PPA variants is little understood. In this study, individuals with agrammatic (PPA-G) and logopenic (PPA-L) PPA, along with age-matched controls, performed a picture-word interference task to test for online phonological processing deficits during naming. All groups exhibited phonological facilitation (PF) effects, i.e., speeded picture naming in the presence of phonologically-related words. However, the PPA participants exhibited abnormally large PF effects that also were protracted, compared to the control group. These results suggest that impaired phonological processing may contribute to anomia in PPA-G and PPA-L