The Impact of Lexical-semantic Impairment on Spoken Verb Production in Individuals With Mild Cognitive Impairment.

Background: Although episodic memory is the primary concern in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), other cognitive functions may also be affected, including language. Language impairment in individuals with MCI has been attributed primarily to the breakdown of semantic representations, difficulties in accessing semantic information, and the weakening of executive functions. However, in most prior studies of word processing in individuals with MCI, researchers have used measures focused on noun production.

Objective: To investigate how verb production tasks might aid in detecting cognitive impairment in individuals with MCI.

Methods: We compared the performance of 45 individuals with MCI and 45 healthy controls on action naming and action fluency tasks.

Results: In the action naming task, the performance of participants with MCI was significantly impaired compared to healthy controls in terms of total score, the number of semantic errors produced, and the use of generic terms. In the action fluency task, participants with MCI produced significantly fewer verbs, fewer clusters, and fewer switches than healthy controls.

Conclusion: The results of our study emphasize the utility of verb production tasks in the identification of cognitive impairment in individuals with MCI and provide evidence of the importance of including action naming and action fluency tasks in the assessment of individuals with MCI.