Objective: To prepare action-related (AR) and emotion-related (ER) linguistic stimuli in Slovenian language to test language functions in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients.

Background: PD patients have difficulties in various language domains, including vocabulary (1). They have trouble processing AR and ER language such as action verbs, e.g., jump (2), nouns of manipulable objects, e.g., spoon (3) and emotional valence words with positive valence (PV), e.g., triumph, or negative valence (NV), e.g., gloom (4). Motor and limbic brain regions probably participate in processing AR and ER language (5, 6). PD causes dysfunction in these areas which may worsen processing of AR and ER words.

Method: To create the linguistic stimuli, we adapted action verbs from Druks et al to Slovenian language (7). Each verb was assigned into high activity (HA), e.g., run, or low activity (LA), e.g., sit category. We chose nouns from IMABASE (8) that we could clearly assign to high manipulability (HM), e.g., pencil, or low manipulability (LM), e.g., star, categories. We prepared 268 words, 75 in categories of HA and LA and 193 in categories of HM and LM. 120 native Slovenian participants assessed the level of activity or manipulability, scoring the words from 1 to 5 points, 1 being highest and 5 being lowest activity or manipulability. 40 PV and 40 NV words were selected from the Slovenian ANEW database (9). We identified the frequency of words using the Gigafida corpus (10). A lexical decision task (LDT) with the created stimuli will be used to test vocabulary dysfunction in PD[MT1] . In an LDT, the participants decide if a string of letters is a real word or not (11).

Results: We created a selection of the highest and lowest rated 230 words. Average rating, length and frequency for each category were computed (Table 1). A t-test was performed to determine that there are sufficient differences between average ratings in pairs of categories (Table 2). Average word length and frequency were tested between pairs of categories to confirm matching, which enables the comparison of semantic differences (Table 3). We expect to see more errors and longer response time in LDT for HA, HM, PV, and NV words compared LA or LM words.

Conclusion: Novel Slovene language stimuli were created for LDT, which should enable us to study word recognition for AR and ER language in PD patients.

References: 1. Smith KM, Caplan DN. Communication impairment in Parkinson’s disease: Impact of motor and cognitive symptoms on speech and language. Brain Lang. 2018; 185 (August): 38–46.
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10. Gigafida 2.0: Korpus pisne standardne slovenščine, viri.cjvt.si/gigafida
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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/action-and-emotion-related-language-abilities-in-slovenian-speaking-individuals-with-parkinsons-disease-a-background-normative-study/