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How is language ability related to PTSD?

Language may be altered in people with PTSD. Tasks designed to assess language ability include letter fluency tasks that assess the ability to generate words starting with a particular letter. Category fluency tasks assess the ability to name words within a specified category. Working memory is needed for both letter and category fluency as participants must organise and retrieve relevant information.

Other tests designed to assess language include: Boston Naming task; Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) comprehension (including the subtest information, similarities and vocabulary), WAIS verbal memory, verbal fluency, National Adult Reading Test (NART)/ Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT), Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWA), Category Instance Generation Test (CIGT), Multiple Choice Vocabulary Test (MWT-B), Hopkins Verbal Learning Test (HVLT), California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT), Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT), semantic priming tasks and Lexical Decision Task and the Peabody Individual Achievement reading comprehension (PIAT). Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is used to determine the degree of incoherence in language.

What is the evidence for language alterations in people with PTSD?

Moderate to low quality evidence finds medium-sized effects showing children and adults with PTSD had poorer language ability than people without PTSD. There were no differences between adults aged over 65 years.

August 2021

Image: ©Petr Vaclavek – stock.adobe.com

Last updated at: 5:37 am, 15th October 2021
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Fact Sheet Technical Commentary
Tags:  Language

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