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Characterizing Verbal and Non-Verbal Executive Functions in Chronic Post-Stroke Aphasia

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 3:00 – 5:00 pm, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Emily J. Lenz¹ (esebran@purdue.edu), Kylie Norman¹, Amanda Rickert¹, Arianna N. LaCroix¹; ¹Purdue University

Executive functions (EFs)— skills needed to coordinate multiple cognitive processes to achieve goals— are commonly assessed using the Berg Card Sort Task (BCST). The BCST assesses three non-verbal EF domains: inhibiting habituated responses, sustaining attention, and shifting between tasks. It's also important to index verbal EFs, especially in clinical populations with co-occurring EF and language deficits (i.e. people with aphasia; PWA). Tasks for assessing verbal EFs are scarce, though evidence suggests verbal EFs may better predict language abilities in PWA. The present study applies a recently published verbal adaptation of the BCST, the VCST, to measure verbal EFs in PWA. Thirty PWA and 19 age-matched controls completed the BCST and VCST. Exploratory principal component analysis largely confirmed a three-component structure for both tasks, corresponding to inhibition, sustained attention, and shifting. Results further indicated that PWA had poorer inhibition and shifting than the control group on both tasks, however no differences in sustained attention were observed. Inhibition and shifting were comparable across the BCST and VCST for the control group, but only shifting correlated across the two tasks in PWA. These findings demonstrate that inhibition and shifting are impaired in PWA compared to controls, and that sustained attention is comparable across the two groups. The non-significant Group × Task interaction indicates that verbal and nonverbal executive functions are similarly impaired in PWA. Although future work should link VCST and BCST performance to language outcomes in aphasia, these results suggest the two tasks tap comparable constructs, likely reflecting a domain-general executive resource.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Goal maintenance & switching