title: Sentence comprehension in Alzheimer's disease.
abstract: We asked 22 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) to respond to simple probes of sentences where we manipulated grammatical factors, semantic factors, and cognitive resource demands associated with a sentence. The results demonstrated limitations in the cognitive resources needed to appreciate atypical syntactic-thematic mapping relations and difficulty processing selection restrictions associated with a verb. By comparison, comprehension in AD was not influenced by the active or passive voice of a sentence. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that impaired sentence comprehension in AD is multifactorial in nature, including difficulty processing cognitive resource and semantic aspects of sentences.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA 19104-4283, USA. mgrossma@mail.med.upenn.edu
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Grossman
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: White-Devine
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000150:complications*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D006801:Humans; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012660:Semantics; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D013067:Speech Perception; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric