Sentence comprehension in Alzheimer's disease.
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.
Grossman
M
M
Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA 19104-4283, USA. mgrossma@mail.med.upenn.edu
White-Devine
T
T
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