title: Sentence comprehension deficits in Alzheimer's disease: a comparison of off-line vs. on-line sentence processing.
abstract: Two studies explored whether sentence comprehension impairments in Alzheimer's disease (AD) are due to deficits in syntactic processing or memory. Study 1 used a picture-pointing sentence comprehension task to measure the final outcome of comprehension in an off-line fashion. It showed the comprehension of 30 patients with AD to be impaired, but suggested that the deficits could not be attributed solely to syntactic impairments. Study 2 investigated the effects of memory on sentence comprehension by comparing off-line (grammaticality judgment) with on-line (cross-modal naming) language processing in 11 AD and 9 control subjects. The results revealed impaired performance in the off-line task but normal performance in the on-line task using the same sentences. Performance on the off-line task correlated with independent measures of verbal working memory. These data are used to argue that sentence comprehension impairments are related to verbal working memory deficits in AD.
authors.affiliation: Program in Neural, Informational and Behavioral Sciences, University of Southern California kempler@hsc.usc.edu
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kempler
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Almor
authors.forename: L K
authors.initials: LK
authors.lastname: Tyler
authors.forename: E S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Andersen
authors.forename: M C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: MacDonald
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000150:complications*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*