Lupine Publishers Group

Confrontation Naming Errors of Alzheimer’s Disease Patients

by Stephen C Enwefa* and Regina Enwefa

Abstract: This study investigated confrontation naming errors of Alzheimer’s disease patients. Clinicians lack a validated test battery for differentiating the communication disorders of patients with AD from either normal elderly or patients with aphasia [1,3]. The communication of AD patients is often assessed with one of the standardized test batteries for aphasia. This was done because of the marked discrepancy between language and other cognitive functions. A linguistic measure involving errors in confrontation naming was used to establish the extent of linguistic impairment of AD patients. A total of ten photographs were shown to twenty AD patients, (ten mild and ten moderate) and ten normal elderly. The results showed that naming errors increased as the disease progressed. The study concluded that the number of naming errors of AD patients increased as the severity of the disease progressed.