Sensitivity to gender, person, and tense inflection by persons with Alzheimer's disease.
This paper investigates sensitivity to gender, person, and tense inflection in individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) in on-line and off-line tasks. Fourteen persons with AD and 14 matched controls participated in two studies: sensitivity to gender incongruity was tested in an on-line reading task and sensitivity to violation of tense and person was tested with an off-line grammaticality judgement test. Group performance was comparable on both tasks. It is argued that patients' preserved sensitivity to these features is primarily a function of the simplicity of the required operations. The notion of simplicity in this context is discussed and various parameters are offered for future investigation.
The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. gkave@012.net.il
Gitit
G
Kavé
Yonata
Y
Levy
D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000150:complications*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010700:Phonetics; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013067:Speech Perception