Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 May;32(4):560-578.
doi: 10.1080/09602011.2020.1835676. Epub 2020 Oct 28.

Eyetracking during picture naming predicts future vocabulary dropout in progressive anomia

Jamie Reilly  1   2   3 , Maurice Flurie  1   2 , Molly B Ungrady  3
Affiliations

Eyetracking during picture naming predicts future vocabulary dropout in progressive anomia

Jamie Reilly et al. Neuropsychol Rehabil. 2022 May.

Abstract

The dynamic and unpredictable nature of expressive vocabulary dropout in progressive anomia presents a challenge for language intervention. We evaluated whether eye gaze patterns during naming could predict anomia for the same items in the near future. We tracked naming accuracy and gaze patterns as patients with semantic (n = 7) or logopenic (n = 2) variants of Primary Progressive Aphasia or amnestic Alzheimer's Disease (n = 1), named photographs of people and objects. Patients were tested three or more times spaced roughly evenly over an average duration of 19.1 months. Target words named accurately at baseline were retrospectively coded as either known (i.e., consistently named) or vulnerable (i.e., inaccurately or inconsistently named) based on naming accuracy over the study interval. We extracted gaze data corresponding to successful naming attempts and implemented logistic mixed effects models to determine whether common gaze measures could predict each word's naming status as known or vulnerable. More visual fixations and greater visual fixation dispersion predicted later anomia. These findings suggest that eye tracking may yield a biomarker of the robustness of particular target words to future expressive vocabulary dropout. We discuss the potential utility of this finding for optimizing treatment for progressive anomia.

Keywords: Anomia; Dementia; Eyetracking; Naming; Primary progressive Aphasia.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Disclosure of Competing Interests

The authors report no conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Fixation count vs. fixation dispersion Note: These data are fictional and for illustrative purposes only. Red circles represent discrete visual fixations. Fixation count is the total number of fixations (circles) during a given time interval. Fixation dispersion reflects the spatial distribution of the fixations. The most efficient visual search is represented by the cat in the lower left quadrant.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Eyetracking measures for known vs. vulnerable items Note: In the scatterplots above, each dot represents an individual patient’s performance across both conditions.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Gaze pattern differences for known vs. vulnerable words Note: Error bars reflect standard error of the mean (SEM)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Baddeley AD, Baddeley HA, Bucks RS, & Wilcock GK (2001). Attentional control in Alzheimer’s disease. Brain, 124(8), 1492–1508. - PubMed
    1. Bar M (2003). A cortical mechanism for triggering top-down facilitation in visual object recognition. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15(4), 600–609. - PubMed
    1. Bar M, Kassam KS, Ghuman AS, Boshyan J, Schmid AM, Dale AM, Hämäläinen MS, Marinkovic K, Schacter DL, & Rosen BR (2006). Top-down facilitation of visual recognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(2), 449–454. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bates D, Maechler M, Bolker B, & Walker S (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1–48. https://doi.org/doi:10.18637/jss.v067.i01 - DOI
    1. Bayles KA, Tomoeda CK, Kaszniak AW, & Trosset MW (1991). Alzheimer’s disease effects on semantic memory: Loss of structure or impaired processing? Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 3(2), 166–182. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources