{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,24]],"date-time":"2026-02-24T03:31:42Z","timestamp":1771903902841,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":38,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,1,20]],"date-time":"2021-01-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1611100800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders","award":["K23 DC016912"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["K23 DC016912"]}]},{"name":"National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders","award":["K23 DC016912"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["K23 DC016912"]}]},{"name":"National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders","award":["F31 DC015703-02"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["F31 DC015703-02"]}]},{"name":"National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders","award":["R01 DC013547-01"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["R01 DC013547-01"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Brain Sciences"],"abstract":"<jats:p>\u201cFunctional communication\u201d refers to an individual\u2019s ability to communicate effectively in his or her everyday environment, and thus is a paramount skill to monitor and target therapeutically in people with aphasia. However, traditional controlled-paradigm assessments commonly used in both research and clinical settings often fail to adequately capture this ability. In the current study, facets of functional communication were measured from picture-elicited speech samples from 70 individuals with mild primary progressive aphasia (PPA), including the three variants, and 31 age-matched controls. Building upon methods recently used by Berube et al. (2019), we measured the informativeness of speech by quantifying the content of each patient\u2019s description that was relevant to a picture relative to the total amount of speech they produced. Importantly, form-based errors, such as mispronunciations of words, unusual word choices, or grammatical mistakes are not penalized in this approach. We found that the relative informativeness, or efficiency, of speech was preserved in non-fluent variant PPA patients as compared with controls, whereas the logopenic and semantic variant PPA patients produced significantly less informative output. Furthermore, reduced informativeness in the semantic variant is attributable to a lower production of content units and a propensity for self-referential tangents, whereas for the logopenic variant, a lower production of content units and relatively \u201dempty\u201d speech and false starts contribute to this reduction. These findings demonstrate that functional communication impairment does not uniformly affect all the PPA variants and highlight the utility of naturalistic speech analysis for measuring the breakdown of functional communication in PPA.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/brainsci11020130","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,1,20]],"date-time":"2021-01-20T12:16:18Z","timestamp":1611144978000},"page":"130","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":22,"title":["Breakdowns in Informativeness of Naturalistic Speech Production in Primary Progressive Aphasia"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"11","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9338-2727","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jeanne","family":"Gall\u00e9e","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Claire","family":"Cordella","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Frontotemporal Disorders Unit, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02129, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Evelina","family":"Fedorenko","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA"},{"name":"Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Daisy","family":"Hochberg","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Frontotemporal Disorders Unit, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02129, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Alexandra","family":"Touroutoglou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Frontotemporal Disorders Unit, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02129, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Megan","family":"Quimby","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Frontotemporal Disorders Unit, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02129, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5958-3445","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Bradford C.","family":"Dickerson","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Frontotemporal Disorders Unit, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02129, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,1,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1535","DOI":"10.1056\/NEJMra022435","article-title":"Primary Progressive Aphasia\u2014A Language-Based Dementia","volume":"349","author":"Mesulam","year":"2003","journal-title":"N. 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