The ScreeLing: Detecting Semantic, Phonological, and Syntactic Deficits in the Clinical Subtypes of Frontotemporal and Alzheimer’s Dementia

The ScreeLing is a screening instrument developed to assess post-stroke aphasia, via the linguistic levels Syntax, Phonology, and Semantics. It could also be a useful test for the clinical subtypes of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Alzheimer’s dementia (AD), as specific and often selective disorders are expected. Its ability to differentiate between the clinical subtypes of FTD and AD is, however, still unknown. We investigated differences in ScreeLing total and subscores, linguistic-level disorders’ relationship with disease severity, and classification abilities, in patients with behavioral variant FTD (bvFTD; n = 46), patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA; n = 105) (semantic variant primary progressive aphasia [svPPA], non-fluent variant primary progressive aphasia [nfvPPA], and logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia [lvPPA], AD [n = 20] and controls [n = 35]). We examined group differences in ScreeLing total and subscores, and one-, two- or three-level linguistic disorders using one-way analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) or Quade’s rank ANCOVA. We used frequency analyses to obtain the occurrence of the linguistic-level disorders. We determined sensitivity and specificity by the area under the curve by receiver-operating characteristics analyses to investigate classification abilities. The total score was lower in patients (bvFTD: 63.8 ± 8.5, svPPA: 58.8 ± 11.3, nfvPPA: 63.5 ± 8.4, lvPPA: 61.7 ± 6.6, AD: 63.8 ± 5.5) than controls (71.3 ± 1.0) (p <.001). Syntax subscores were lower in svPPA (19.4 ± 4.6; p <.001) and lvPPA (20.3 ± 3.2; p =.002) than controls (23.8 ± 0.4). Phonology subscores were lower in lvPPA (19.8 ± 2.6) than bvFTD (21.7 ± 2.8) (p =.010). Semantics subscores were lowest in svPPA (17.8 ± 5.0; p <.002). A selective phonological disorder was most prevalent in lvPPA (34.9%). The higher the disease severity, the more linguistic-level disorders. The optimal cutoff for the total score was 70, and 23 for all three subscores. Good classification abilities were found for the Semantics (svPPA vs. bvFTD), Phonology (lvPPA vs. svPPA), and Syntax (nfvPPA vs. lvPPA) subscores. This easy to administer test gives information about language processing with the potential to improve differential diagnosis in memory clinics and in the future potentially also clinical trial planning.