Maximiliano A. Wilson

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Université Laval

Body–object interaction (BOI) measures the ease with which the human body can interact with the concept represented by a word. This research focuses on two main objectives: first, to establish French norms for the psycholinguistic variable BOI, and second, to investigate the contribution of BOI to language processing in French. We collected BOI rat...

Abstract: Anomia, characterized by difficulty in word retrieval, particularly action verbs, poses a significant challenge in post-stroke aphasia. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has gained attention for language processing investigations and interventions. This systematic review explores the potential of rTMS as a modality to ad...

Semantic memory representations are generally well maintained in aging, whereas semantic control is thought to be more affected. To explain this phenomenon, this study tested the predictions of the Compensation-Related Utilization of Neural Circuits Hypothesis (CRUNCH), focusing on task demands in aging as a possible framework. The CRUNCH effect wo...

Introduction: Discourse is one of the main linguistic aspects affected by Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and its relationship with memory needs to be further studied, mainly in low education and low socioeconomic status (SES) groups. The present study aimed at investigating differences in the recall of short narratives between participants with mild AD...

Semantic memory representations are generally well maintained in aging, whereas semantic control is thought to be more affected. To explain this phenomenon, this study tested the predictions of the Compensation-Related Utilization of Neural Circuits Hypothesis (CRUNCH), focusing on task demands in aging as a possible framework. The CRUNCH effect wo...

Objective Anomia is usually assessed using picture-naming tests. While many tests evaluate anomia for nouns, very few tests have been specifically designed for verb anomia. This article presents the DVAQ-30, a new naming test for detecting verb anomia in adults and elderly people. Method The article describes three studies. Study 1 focused on the...

: The Detection Test for Language Impairments in Adults and the Aged (DTLA) is a quick, sensitive, and standardized screening test designed to assess language disorders in adults and elderly people. The test was specifically developed to detect linguistic impairment associated with major neurocognitive disorders. In 2017, we established normative...

We investigate the association of short- and long-range recurrences (speech connectedness) with age, education, and reading and writing habits (RWH) in typical aging using an oral narrative production task. Oral narrative transcriptions were represented as word-graphs to measure short- and long-range recurrences. Speech connectedness was explained...

Word finding difficulties, particularly for verbs, are a common symptom in post-stroke aphasia and people with neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease. Word finding difficulties for verbs are mainly assessed by action naming tasks, using often images depicting actions. However, videos seem to be more adapted than images for action n...

Sanfaçon-Verret, A., Paradis, C., A. Wilson, M. et Monetta, L. (2022). ESPaCo : Échelle de satisfaction de la participation communicationnelle pour les personnes ayant un trouble acquis.

During normal aging there is a decline in cognitive functions that includes deficits in oral discourse production. A higher level of education and more frequent reading and writing habits (RWH) might delay the onset of the cognitive decline during aging. This study aimed at investigating the effect of education and RWH on oral discourse production...

A presente revisão sistemática tem por objetivo verificar quais as tarefas comumente utilizadas para elucidação da produção discursiva oral do adulto idoso e sua relação com escolaridade e hábitos de leitura e escrita. Para tanto, buscaram-se artigos publicados nas bases de dados Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, MEDLINE e LILACS. Os termos utilizado...

Background The role of semantic knowledge in emotion recognition remains poorly understood. The semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) is a degenerative disorder characterized by progressive loss of semantic knowledge, while other cognitive abilities remain spared, at least in the early stages of the disease. The syndrome is theref...

Semantic memory representations are overall well-maintained in aging whereas semantic control is thought to be more affected. To explain this phenomenon, this study aims to test the predictions of the Compensation Related Utilization of Neural Circuits Hypothesis (CRUNCH) focusing on task demands in aging as a possible framework. The CRUNCH effect...

Connected speech is an everyday activity. We aimed to investigate whether connected speech can differentiate oral narrative production between adults with Alzheimer’s disease (AD; n = 24) and cognitively healthy older adults (n = 48). We used graph attributes analysis to represent connected speech. Participants produced oral narratives and performe...

Background: Connected speech, an ecologically valid task, represents a valuable tool to support the detection of linguistic and cognitive impairment. Objective: First, to verify whether connected speech can differentiate oral narrative production between adults with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and cognitively healthy older adults (HOA). Second, to ver...

Background: There is only one instrument to assess functionality directly to the patients in Brazil (Directed Assessment Functional Status revised). However, this instrument is impractical for fast, outpatient and hospital contexts. We need to count with a brief and direct assessment of functionality due to the increasement of elders living alone....

Background: Few studies have been made to investigate the role of cognitive stimulating habits such as frequency of reading and writing habits (FRWH) in executive functions (EF) of elderlies with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), who suffers from EF deficits. Objectives: investigate whether FRWH, a possible proxy of cognitive reserve, contributes to...

Semantic deficits are common in individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD). These deficits notably impact the ability to understand words. In healthy aging, semantic knowledge increases but semantic processing (i.e., the ability to use this knowledge) may be impaired. This systematic review aimed to investigate semantic processing in healthy aging a...

Objective: A reduction in lexical access is observed in normal aging and a few studies also showed that this ability is affected in individuals with subjective cognitive decline. Lexical access is also affected very early in mild cognitive impairment as well as in major neurocognitive disorders. The detection of word-finding difficulties in the ea...

Several studies in Spanish and other languages have shown that, in a lexical decision task, children are more likely to accept pseudowords with a known morphological structure as words as compared to non-morphological pseudowords. Morphology also facilitates visual word recognition of actual words in children with reading difficulties. In the prese...

Studies on morphological processing in French, as in other languages, have shown disparate results. We argue that a critical and long-overlooked factor that could underlie these diverging results is the methodological differences in the calculation of morphological variables across studies. To address the need for a common morphological database, w...

In the last decades, a series of studies has explored the role of morphological awareness on reading comprehension. Path analysis studies performed in English have shown that morphological awareness benefits reading comprehension both directly and indirectly, through word decoding. This issue has seldom been explored in Spanish. The aim of this stu...

There is compelling evidence that semantic memory is involved in emotion recognition. However, its contribution to the recognition of emotional valence and basic emotions remains unclear. We compared the performance of 10 participants with the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), a clinical model of semantic memory impairment, t...

The goal of the study was to determine whether the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) affects the intrinsic connectivity network anchored to left and right anterior hippocampus, but spares the posterior hippocampus. A resting‐state functional connectivity MRI (rs‐fcMRI) study was conducted in a group of patients with svPPA and...

L’objectif principal de cet article est de présenter le développement, la validation et la normalisation du Questionnaire Sémantique de Québec (QueSQ). Le QueSQ est un questionnaire comportant 12 items, permettant le dépistage rapide des troubles sémantiques. Il a été conçu en tenant compte des paramètres psycholinguistiques pouvant influencer la p...

World population is aging rapidly. Normal aging is associated with a decline in cognitive abilities. We need to better understand the trajectory of cognitive changes during normal and impaired aging, as well as the lifestyle and psychosocial factors that may affect the slope at which cognitive decline may occur. This special issue on neuropsycholog...

The main goal of this study was to examine the role of semantic memory in the recognition of emotional valence conveyed by words. Eight participants presenting with the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) and 33 healthy control participants were administered three tasks designed to investigate the formal association between the...

Background: The semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) is a form of dementia, mainly featuring language impairment, for which the extent of white matter (WM) damage is less described than its associated grey matter (GM) atrophy. Our study aimed to characterise the extent of this damage using a sensitive and unbiased approach. Met...

Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD)and semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA)can present with similar language impairments, mainly in naming. It has been hypothesized that these deficits are associated with different brain mechanisms in each disease, but no previous study has used a network approach to explore this hypothesis. The...

The role of morphology in word recognition during reading acquisition in transparent orthographies is a subject that has received little attention. The goal of this study is to examine the variables affecting the fluency and accuracy for morphologically complex word reading across grade levels in Spanish. We conducted two word-naming experiments in...

Objective: The Trail Making Test (TMT) is mainly used to assess visual scanning/processing speed (part A) and executive functions (part B). The test has proven sensitive at detecting cognitive impairment during aging. However, previous studies have shown differences between normative data from different countries and cultures, even when corrected f...

ABSTRACTObject decision (OD) test is one subtest of the Birmingham Object Recognition Battery (BORB). It is useful for differential diagnosis among several neurodegenerative diseases. However, normative data provided with this battery count on very few subjects and do not control for the effect of age, which limits interpretability. The purpose of...

Reading is composed of multiple and interdependent processes, and according to the dual-route model, such ability is exerted basically in two ways, the phonological one and the lexical one. Reading in the mother tongue (L1) requires explicit instruction and it is a great challenge, precisely because of the multiple processes involved. By learning a...

Le parole morfologicamente complesse rappresentano un fenomeno pervasivo del linguaggio, il che motiva il crescente interesse della comunità scientifica nei meccanismi che guidano il riconoscimento visivo di tali forme. Uno studio completo della morfologia (derivazionale e flessiva) e dell’elaborazione morfologica richiede tuttavia la disponibilità...

The suggestion that neurofunctional reorganization may contribute to preserved language abilities is still emerging in aging studies. Some of these abilities, such as verbal fluency (VF), are not unitary but instead rely on different strategic processes that are differentially changed with age. Younger (n = 13) and older adults (n = 13) carried out...

Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore the age-related brain activation changes during a word-matching semantic-category-based task, which required either repeating or changing a semantic rule to be applied. In order to do so, a word-semantic rule-based task was adapted from the Wisconsin Sorting Card Test, involving the repeated feedb...

To date, there is no quick screening test that could be used during routine office visits to accurately assess language disorders in neurodegenerative diseases. To fill this important gap, we developed the Detection Test for Language impairments in Adults and the Aged (DTLA), a quick, sensitive, standardized screening test designed to assess langua...

Most of the new words a reader will find are morphologically complex. Also, theoretical models of language processing propose that morphology plays an important role in visual word processing. Nevertheless, studies on the subject show contradicting results that are difficult to reconcile. One factor that may explain this is the lack of a sizeable a...

ABSTRACTWord-finding difficulties are usually assessed with picture-naming tests. In this article, we present the TDQ-60, a new test designed to assess acquired lexical access deficits, taking into account semantics and psycholinguistic variables. The article includes three studies. Study 1 describes the development phase of the TDQ-60. In study 2,...

Growing evidence from the neuroscience of aging suggests that executive function plays a pivotal role in maintaining semantic processing performance. However, the presumed age-related activation changes that sustain executive semantic processing remain poorly understood. The aim of this study was to explore the executive aspects of semantic process...

The aim of this study was to investigate the comprehension of concrete, abstract and abstract emotional words in semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and healthy elderly adults (HE) Three groups of participants (9 svPPA, 12 AD, 11 HE) underwent a general neuropsychological assessment, a similarity judgment...

Compared to cognitive functions such as working memory and executive functions, language appears to be mostly resistant to age-related decline. However, language is affected in the early stages of major forms of dementia and language deficits are at the core of the clinical portrait of primary progressive aphasias. Primary care providers are freque...

La détection des troubles cognitifs associés au vieillissement figure parmi les priorités en matière de soins de santé dans la plupart des sociétés occidentales. Dans les services de première ligne, ainsi que dans les cliniques spécialisées, cette détection est effectuée à l’aide d’outils tels que le MMSE ou le MoCA. Dans la majorité de ces tests,...

Le DTLA est un test standardisé de dépistage des troubles du langage chez l’adulte et la personne âgée. Il comprend 9 sous-tests créés pour rapidement (5 minutes) évaluer les domaines et les habiletés linguistiques les plus fréquemment affectés dans les maladies neurodégénératives. Ce nouveau test présente une bonne validité convergente et discrimi...

The anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) have been consistently associated with semantic processing which, in turn, has a key role in reading aloud single words. This study aimed to investigate (1) the reading abilities in patients with the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), and (2) the relationship between gray matter (GM) volume o...

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a heterogeneous neurodegenerative condition in which the most prominent clinical feature is language difficulties. Other cognitive domains have been described to remain unaffected at the early stages of the disease and, therefore, excluded from diagnostic criteria. However, we show in this article that executive...

While the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) is characterized by a predominant semantic memory impairment, episodic memory impairments are the clinical hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, AD patients also present with semantic deficits, which are more severe for semantically unique entities (e.g. a famous person) tha...

This chapter offers an overview of the pragmatic and social communication disorders that can occur after an alteration of the brain, as best exemplified by individuals with right hemisphere damage. It also discusses the theoretical approaches developed to explain indirect speech act comprehension and inference impairments affecting conversational a...

Music can induce particular emotions and activate semantic knowledge. In the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), semantic memory is impaired as a result of anterior temporal lobe (ATL) atrophy. Semantics is responsible for the encoding and retrieval of factual knowledge about music, including associative and emotional attribute...

Comparativement à la mémoire et aux fonctions exécutives, le langage est peu affecté par le vieillissement. Cependant, les troubles du langage sont rencontrés dans la plupart des démences et se situent au cœur même du tableau clinique des aphasies primaires progressives. Les cliniciens de 1ère ligne sont d’ailleurs très fréquemment confrontés à des...

Cognitive and computational models of reading aloud agree on the existence of two procedures for reading. Pseudowords (e.g., atendier) are correctly read through subword processes only while exception words (e.g., pint) are only correctly read via whole-words processes. Regular words can be correctly read by means of either way. Previous behavioral...

The ability to recognize a famous person occurs through semantic memory. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that the anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) are involved in the recognition of famous people. However, it is still a matter of debate whether the semantic processing of names or pictures of famous people has an impact on the activation of A...

Introduction Les troubles du langage sont présents à divers degrés dans pathologies dégénératives (maladie d’Alzheimer, aphasies primaires progressives) et interfèrent sur la communication et l’évaluation cognitive. Les identifier est donc important. Objectifs Nous présentons un outil de dépistage des troubles du langage dans le vieillissement (D-...

The co-occurrence of semantic impairment and surface dyslexia in the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) has often been taken as supporting evidence for the central role of semantics in visual word processing. According to connectionist models, semantic access is needed to accurately read irregular words. They also postulate tha...

La utilización de estímulos pictóricos en la investigación básica y clínica puso de manifiesto la necesidad de disponer de material con normas pictóricas, lingüísticas y semánticas adecuadas a cada población. El objetivo del estudio que se informa es presentar los tiempos de latencia obtenidos a partir de una tarea de denominación con tiem pos de r...

Background Successful reading can be achieved by means of two different procedures: sub‐word processes for the pronunciation of words without semantics or pseudowords (PW) and whole‐word processes that recruit word‐specific information regarding the pronunciation of words with atypical orthography‐to‐phonology mappings (exception words, EW). Metho...

Bourgeois-Marcotte, J., Wilson, M. A., Forest, M. et Monetta, L. (2015). TEFREP : Épreuve de répétition de phrases en franco-québécois.

The nature of the lexical selection process in bilingual spoken word production is one of the pending questions of research on bilingualism. According to one view this competitive process is language-specific, while another holds that it is language-nonspecific (i.e., lexical competition is cross-linguistic). In recent years, research on bilingual...

Sentence repetition is part of the assessment tasks used to better characterise aphasic patients' oral production. Moreover, impaired sentence and phrase repetition is a core feature of the logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia. The aim of this study is to present the TEFREP (TEst Français de RÉpétition de Phrases), a French sentence rep...

Normative databases for pictorial stimuli are widely used in research on language processing in order to control for a number of psycholinguistic variables in the selected stimuli. Such resources are lacking for Arabic and its dialectal varieties. In the present study, we aimed to provide Tunisian Arabic (TA) normative data for 348 line drawings ta...

Abstract Adjectives are lexical words used to modify nouns and refer to physical and concrete properties as well as abstract properties denoted by nouns. Although adjectives directly refer to semantic attributes, no study has explicitly examined the comprehension of adjectives in the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). In this...

Introduction The contribution of the brain’s right hemisphere to verbal communication has been established through clinical and theoretical reports since the mid-twentieth century and is well acknowledged nowadays. Many adults with acquired right brain lesions can exhibit impairment in one or more communication components. The presence of prosodic,...