Individual variability in attention and language performance in aphasia: a study using Conner’s Continuous Performance Test

Abstract

Background: Individual variability in attention in aphasia is important because moment-to-moment fluctuations in attention could might influence language performance. Aims: Moment-to-moment variability in performance has been considered a feature of aphasia. The aim of the current work is to study the possible relationship between moment-to-moment intraindividual fluctuations in attention and their possible relationship with language disorders in people with aphasia (PWA). Methods & Procedures: 24 controls and 21 PWA matched by age and sex took part in the study. Language assessment included phonological processing (phonological discrimination, word and pseudoword repetition), lexical access (auditory lexical decision, spoken word-to-picture matching and naming), and semantic association (object–action association, semantic association, and odd-one-out). Attention assessment employed a comprehensive test of basic attention functions (Conner’s Continuous Performance Test II). We studied the association between indices of intraindividual variability in response time in Conner’s Continuous Performance Test and linguistic performance in both groups. Outcomes & Results: PWA showed increased response times and also increased intraindividual variability in response speed. Moreover, only in this group, response speed variability was significantly associated with speech discrimination and with performance in semantic association tasks. Indices of intraindividual variability predicted performance in linguistic tasks in PWA, even after accounting for language performance in related tasks. Conclusion: The current results provide additional support to evidence suggesting a relationship between attention skills and some aspects of linguistic performance in PWA, and draw attention to the putative importance of processing speed instability.