Abstract:
Objectives: Lexical access is the process by which the basic conceptual, syntactical and morpho-phonological information of words are activated. Most studies of lexical access have focused on picture naming. There is hardly any previous research on other parameters of lexical access such as verbal fluency and analysis of connected speech in Persian normal participants. This study investigates the lexical access performance in normal speakers in different issues such as age, sex and education. Methods: The performance of 120 adult Persian speakers in three tasks including picture naming, verbal fluency and connected speech, was examined using "Persian Lexical Access Assessment Package”. The performance of participants between two gender groups (male / female), three education groups (below 5 years / above 12 years / between 5 and 12 years) and three age groups (18 - 35 years / 36 - 55 years / 56 - 75 years) were compared. Results: According to findings, picture naming increased with increasing education and decreased with increasing age. The performance of participants in phonological and semantic verbal fluency showed improvement with age and education. No significant difference was seen between males and females in verbal fluency task. In the analysis of connected speech there were no significant differences between different age and education groups and just mean length of utterance in males was significantly higher than females. Discussion: The findings could be a primitive scale for comparison between normal subjects and patients in lexical access tasks, furthermore it could be a horizon for planning of treatment goals in patients with word finding problem according to age, gender and education.
Machine summary:
`Original Article Lexical access in Persian normal speakers: Picture naming, Verbal fluency and Spontaneous speech1 Zahra Sadat Ghoreishi; Mojtaba Azimian* University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
There is hardly any previous research on other parameters of lexical access such as verbal fluency and analysis of connected speech in Persian normal participants.
Methods: The performance of 120 adult Persian speakers in three tasks including picture naming, verbal fluency and connected speech, was examined using "Persian Lexical Access Assessment Package‖.
This study provides primitive scores for lexical access in picture naming, verbal fluency and connected speech measures in normal subjects.
Methods The current cross sectional study examined the lexical access performance of 120 adult Persian speakers in three tasks including picture naming, verbal fluency and connected speech, using "Persian lexical Access Assessment Package"(12).
The Phonological and semantic verbal fluency, picture naming and speech parameters (MLU and speech rate) in males and females are indicated in table (2).
The values of verbal fluency (semantic and phonology), picture naming and speech parameters (MLU and speech rate) in different education groups was shown in table (4).
We just offered average of the normal Persian speakers in verbal fluency, picture naming and analysis of connected speech especially for research and clinical use, since it was a lack.
Conclusion According to the results, it sounds lexical access in picture naming and verbal fluency tasks are affected by age and education.