Abstracts

RATIONALE: Word finding difficulty is most commonly assessed with visual confrontation naming tasks. However, many patients who complain of word finding difficulty and exhibit this problem in everyday discourse show little or no deficits on such tasks. Since word finding difficulty typically occurs in the context of everyday conversation, we reasoned that, perhaps, subjective word finding complaints might correlate better with performance on auditory-based than visually-based naming tasks. METHODS: Accuracy and response time measures on visual and auditory naming tasks (equated for item difficulty) and subjective ratings of word finding difficulty, memory, and emotional well-being were administered to 36 TLE patients (24 left, 20 female). Mean age: 39.0 years (range 18-63), mean estimated IQ: 96.0 (SD=12.5). The Boston Naming Test, a widely used visual naming test, was administered as well. RESULTS: Subjective ratings of word finding difficulty correlated significantly with auditory naming response time (r=.43, p<. 05), but not visual naming response time. Neither visual nor auditory accuracy measures correlated with these ratings. Subjective ratings of word finding difficulty were also not correlated with estimated IQ, Boston Naming Test performance, or subjective ratings of memory and emotional well-being. CONCLUSIONS: Subjective word finding difficulty appears to correspond better with auditory than visual naming performance. Auditory naming measures may be more ecologically valid given that word finding problems typically occur during auditory-based verbal discourse. Moreover, incorporating response time rather than using accuracy scores exclusively may further improve assessment of word finding, as the experience commonly reported involves difficulty accessing a given word at the moment, rather than complete inability to access the word. Our results might explain why subjective complaints of word finding difficulty fail to consistently match performance on visual naming tasks.