Co-construction of lexica in primary progressive aphasia

描述(由申请人提供)：患有原发性进行性失语症(PPA)的患者出现潜伏性发作，并逐渐丧失单词查找、物体命名或单词理解技能，这些技能严重影响他们在日常活动中的言语参与。这项创新研究的总体目标是朝着创建自适应 随着技能的丧失，在PPA中增加词汇获取和单词使用的语言假体已经丢失。短期目标是确定在提供了一种新的干预工具，即一种名为CO-Chat的移动技术应用程序时，轻度到中度PPA的个体在对话中是否提高或保持了单词查找技能，该工具可以根据需要自动向他们呈现相关词汇。Co-Chat是一款模拟的社交媒体应用程序，用于研究，它可以根据用户自己生成的照片、社交网络联系人的评论、设备的元数据以及通过自然语言处理(NLP)技术生成的关键词列表来创建词汇显示。目标1介绍了使用NLP应用程序开发模拟社交媒体应用程序。目的2提出了一项研究，以确定患有PPA的人是否可以使用共聊词汇显示来提高或保持对话中的找词技能。本研究将检验两个假设：(1)当共聊词汇显示可用时，参与者在对话中说出的目标词的数量(和百分比)会增加；(2)当共聊词汇显示可用时，会话伙伴从参与者那里获取日常活动信息所需的问题数量(和百分比)会减少。参与者是从俄勒冈州阿尔茨海默病中心招募的10名患有轻度到中度PPA(无语法或语义变异)的人。提出了一种具有被试内复制和被试间复制的退缩ABAB设计。每个参与者都参与社区活动，拍照并将照片发送到模拟的社交网络上征求意见。依靠这项技术对语言的自动操纵，照片评论然后被分析。从大型词汇语义数据库中挖掘出的相关词与原始照片一起放置在词汇显示中。参与者在5分钟的对话中向熟悉的合作伙伴描述社区活动，不使用技术(基线阶段A)，并使用CO-Chat(实验阶段B)。直观分析不同条件和重复测量的变化，ANOVA评估干预效果。这项拟议的研究需要确定有效的语言补偿策略来治疗PPA患者，这是一种相对较新的诊断，其补偿治疗范例尚未开发出来。研究结果将支持一个更大的研究议程，以进一步开发用于干预的适应性辅助技术，并实施以结果为基础的临床研究，以确定对PPA患者进行基于阶段的纵向AAC/NLP干预的有效性，以便在语言退化过程中利用移动技术保持词汇获取、交流功能和社交网络。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) present with an insidious onset and gradual loss of word finding, object naming, or word-comprehension skills which profoundly affect their verbal participation in daily activities. The overall goal of this innovative research is to take an initial step toward the creation of adaptive language prostheses that augment lexical access and word use in PPA as skills are lost. The short term objective is to determine whether individuals with mild-to-moderate PPA improve or maintain word finding skills during conversation when provided with a novel intervention tool, namely a mobile technology application called CO-CHAT that automatically presents related vocabulary to them as needed. CO-CHAT is a simulated social media app for research which creates lexical displays synthesized from a user's self-generated photos, comments from social network contacts, the device's metadata, and a curated list of key words generated with Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. Aim 1 addresses development of the simulated social media app with NLP applications. Aim 2 proposes a research study to determine whether people with PPA can use the CO-CHAT lexical displays to improve or maintain word finding skills in conversation. Two hypotheses will be tested: (1) The number (and percentage) of target words spoken by participants during conversations will increase when the CO-CHAT lexical displays are available~ (2) The number (and percentage) of questions needed by conversation partners to obtain information from participants about daily activities will decrease when the CO-CHAT lexical displays are available. Participants are 10 individuals with mild-to-moderate PPA (agrammatic or semantic variants) recruited from the Oregon Alzheimer's Disease Center. A withdrawal ABAB design with intra-subject and inter-subject replication is proposed. Each participant engages in community- based activities, taking photos and sending them to a simulated social network for comment. By relying on the technology's automatic manipulation of language, photos comments then are analyzed. Related words that are mined from large lexical semantic databases are placed in the lexical displays with the original photo. Participants describe the community activities to familiar partners in 5-minute conversations without technology (baseline phase A) and with CO- CHAT (experimental phase B). Visual analysis of changes across conditions and repeated measures ANOVAs evaluate intervention effects. The proposed research addresses the need to identify effective language compensation strategies to treat individuals experiencing PPA, a relatively new diagnosis for which compensatory treatment paradigms are yet to be developed. Results will support a larger research agenda to further develop adaptive assistive technologies for intervention, and to implement outcomes-based clinical studies that determine the efficacy of a stage-based longitudinal AAC/NLP intervention for patients with PPA in order to maintain vocabulary access, communication functions and social networks with mobile technology over the course of language degeneration.