Table 2 –
Variables examined as potential predictors of therapy outcomes. 1Scores derived from the RAVLT test (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, Schmidt, 1996). On trials 1–5 the participant hears one list of 15 words and, each time, tries to recall as many words as possible from that list. On trial 6, the participant hears a new list (the interference list), and then tries to recall as many words from this new list as possible. On trials 7 and 8 the participant tries to recall items from the original list, but trial 8 is given after a 30-min delay (delayed recall).
| Variable | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| Treatment | Therapy type | Written naming/spelling vs Spelling-only therapy (as described in the Method). |
| Stimulation condition | Sham or tDCS | |
| Number of sessions | Number of sessions administered. (varied due to participant availability) | |
| Demographic | Age | At the start of therapy |
| Gender | Male or Female | |
| Clinical/language | Years post onset | Time since symptom onset, derived from discussion with individual and caregiver. |
| PPA variant | Diagnosed by a specialized neurologist, based on behavioral symptoms, imaging and examination as defined in Gorno-Tempini, Hillis, et al., 2011, consensus criteria. | |
| Language FTLD-CDR | Score for the language items only and the total sum of all items in the Frontotemporal Lobal Degeneration version of the Clinical Dementia Rating scale (Knopman et al., 2008) | |
| Total FTLD-CDR | ||
| Language | Pre-therapy spelling scores | Pre-therapy score on the outcome measure (percentage of correctly spelled letters for trained or untrained words separately). |
| Spelling words | Accuracy of spelling to dictation words and pseudowords from the JHU dysgraphia | |
| Spelling pseudowords | Battery (Goodman & Caramazza, 1985). | |
| Spelling high frequency | Accuracy of spelling to dictation items from Hillis, n.d., including high and low frequency items, and items with high and low probability of regular correspondence between phonemes and graphemes. | |
| Spelling low frequency | ||
| Spelling high probability | ||
| Spelling low probability | ||
| Object naming | Accuracy of picture naming of objects in the Boston Naming Test, 30 items (Kaplan, Goodglass, Weintraub, & Goodglass, 1983). | |
| Action naming | Accuracy of picture naming for actions in the Hopkins Assessment of Naming Actions, 34 items (HANA, Breining and Tippett et al., 2015) | |
| Object knowledge | Conceptual knowledge of objects assessed with picture association through the Pyramids and Palm Trees Test, 15 items (PPT, Howard & Patterson, 1992; PPTsf-Breining, Lala, et al., 2015) | |
| Action knowledge | Conceptual knowledge of actions assessed with picture association through the Kissing and Dancing Test, 15 items (KDT, Bak & Hodges, 2003) | |
| Comp. of actives | Auditory comprehension of sentences using a sentence-to-picture matching task with thematic and unrelated distractors, the SOAP test (Subject relatives, Object relatives, Actives, Passives, Love & Oster, 2002). | |
| Comp. of passives | ||
| Comp. of subject relatives | ||
| Comp. of object relatives | ||
| Sentence repetition | Number of words repeated correctly during oral repetition of sentences (Hillis, 2015) | |
| Verbal fluency | Sum of words retrieved in the letter fluency (FAS) and category fluency tasks (animals fruits and vegetables), with one minute given for each of the three letters/categories (Benton, Hamsher, & Sivan, 1994). | |
| Cognitive | Digit span backward | Length of digit span from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale e Revised (WAIS-R, Wechsler, 1981) |
| Digit span forward | ||
| Spatial span backward | Length of spatial span from the Corsi block test (Corsi, 1972). | |
| Spatial span forward | ||
| Visual attention | Response times in part A of the Trail Making Test (Parkington & Leiter, 1949). | |
| Task switching | Response times in part B of the Trail Making Test (Parkington & Leiter, 1949). | |
| Immediate recall | Number of words recalled in RAVLT1 trial 1 (Schmidt, 1996). | |
| Final acquisition | Number of words recalled in RAVLT1 trial 5 (Schmidt, 1996). | |
| Total acquisition | Sum of words recalled in RAVLT1 trials 1 to 5, including each trial (Schmidt, 1996). | |
| Learning of 5 trials | Number of words recalled in RAVLT1 trial 5 minus those recalled in trial 1 (Schmidt, 1996). | |
| Proactive interference | Number of words recalled in RAVLT1 trial 1 minus those recalled in trial 6 (Schmidt, 1996). | |
| Retroactive interference | Number of words recalled in RAVLT1 trial 5 minus those recalled in trial 7 (Schmidt, 1996). | |
| Delayed recall | Number of words recalled in RAVLT1 trial 8 (Schmidt, 1996). |