Background and Aim: Fluent aphasia and Alzheimer patients have difficulties in perception and naming. Patient with fluent Aphasia and Alzheimer disease, both have difficulty in perception and naming. Their site of lesion is also identical, that is temporoparietal lobe which is damaged in both group. This study investigates the effects of semantic and phonological cues in facilitation of word finding.
Materials and Methods: The study was prescriptive - analytic cross-sectional with 14 patients. The participants were seven fluent aphasia with mean age 48.4 year old and seven Alzheimer patients with mean age 69/71 year old and mean Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) 16 score. Those were assessed with Persian Naming Test. The Aphasic patients were selected from Tehran University hospitals and Alzheimer ones were from Rouzbeh hospital and Alzheimer Association of Iran.
Results: Mean semantic and phonological cues in fluent aphasia patients were 2.71 and 12.29, respectively, which significantly different (p=0.01), but those results were 8.29 and 3.43 in Alzheimer patients, that were not significantly different (p>0.05). A main result of this study was significant difference between two cues in both groups.
Conclusion: Two groups of patients use two cues in word finding. The correct responses increase with phonological cue in fluent aphasia but semantic cue has the main role for naming in Alzheimer patients.