title: Processing complex pseudo-words in mild cognitive impairment: The interaction of preserved morphological rule knowledge with compromised cognitive ability.
abstract: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) affects the cognitive performance of elderly adults. However, the level of severity is not high enough to be diagnosed with dementia. Previous research reports subtle language impairments in individuals with MCI specifically in domains related to lexical meaning. The present study used both off-line (grammaticality judgment) and on-line (lexical decision) tasks to examine aspects of lexical processing and how they are affected by MCI. 21 healthy older adults and 23 individuals with MCI saw complex pseudo-words that violated various principles of word formation in Slovenian and decided if each letter string was an actual word of their language. The pseudo-words ranged in their degree of violability. A task effect was found, with MCI performance to be similar to that of healthy controls in the off-line task but different in the on-line task. Overall, the MCI group responded slower than the elderly controls. No significant differences were observed in the off-line task, while the on-line task revealed a main effect of Violation type, a main effect of Group and a significant Violation × Group interaction reflecting a difficulty for the MCI group to process pseudo-words in real time. That is, while individuals with MCI seem to preserve morphological rule knowledge, they experience additional difficulties while processing complex pseudo-words. This was attributed to an executive dysfunction associated with MCI that delays the recognition of ungrammatical formations.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Philology - Linguistics Section , University of Patras , Rio-Patras , Greece.
authors.forename: Christina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Manouilidou
authors.affiliation: b Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neurology , Ljubljana University Medical Centre , Ljubljana , Slovenia.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Dolenc
authors.affiliation: c Department of Comparative and General Linguistics , University of Ljubljana , Ljubljana , Slovenia.
authors.forename: Tatjana
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Marvin
authors.affiliation: d Neurology Clinic, Ljubljana University Medical Centre , Ljubljana , Slovenia.|e Department of Neurology , University of Ljubljana , Ljubljana , Slovenia.
authors.forename: Zvezdan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Pirtošek
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D060825:Cognitive Dysfunction / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011578:Psycholinguistics / Q000379:methods; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D017524:Slovenia
keywords: Executive functions; MCI; language disorders; morphology; psycholinguistics