Language Flashcards
7 cards from real MOCA practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Language flashcards as text
Which neurological condition often shows a double dissociation with intact fluency but severely impaired naming on tasks like MoCA?
Answer: Anomic aphasia
Anomic aphasia is characterized specifically by word-finding failures on confrontational naming with relatively preserved fluency of spontaneous speech.
During the MoCA fluency task, which responses are NOT counted toward the patient's score?
Answer: Proper nouns, numbers, and the same root word with different endings
Proper nouns (names, cities), numbers, and morphological variants of a word already said (e.g., 'farm/farmer') are excluded from the fluency count.
A patient says 'rhinoceros' for the rhinoceros picture but then can't name the camel, saying 'I know what it is but I can't say it.' This phrase is called:
Answer: Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
The tip-of-the-tongue state is the feeling of knowing a word but being temporarily unable to retrieve it, common in anomia and normal aging.
On MoCA sentence repetition, a patient adds the word 'little' before 'cat' in the first sentence. How is this scored?
Answer: No point; additions count as errors
Any addition to the sentence, even a small modifier, violates verbatim repetition requirements and results in no point for that sentence.
Which brain region, when damaged, most commonly causes the naming deficits detected by the MoCA naming subtest?
Answer: Left temporal lobe
The left temporal lobe houses semantic and lexical networks critical for confrontational naming; lesions there produce anomia.
In elderly patients, a score of 9–10 words on the MoCA letter fluency task is:
Answer: Below the threshold and warrants further evaluation
The MoCA cutoff of 11 words is applied regardless of age in standard scoring, so 9–10 words does not earn the fluency point and warrants follow-up.
Which of the following best describes the role of the MoCA Language section within the full MoCA assessment?
Answer: It screens for aphasia and word-retrieval deficits that may accompany dementia
The MoCA Language tasks are a brief screen for naming, repetition, and fluency deficits often associated with MCI and dementia, not a comprehensive language battery.