Analysis of word number and content in discourse of patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by impairments in memory and other cognitive functions such as language, which can be affected in all aspects including discourse. A picture description task is considered an effective way of obtaining a discourse sample whose key feature is the ability to retrieve appropriate lexical items. There is no consensus on findings showing that performance in content processing of spoken discourse deteriorates from the mildest phase of AD.ObjectiveTo compare the quantity and quality of discourse among patients with mild to moderate AD and controls.MethodsA cross-sectional study was designed. Subjects aged 50 years and older of both sexes, with one year or more of education, were divided into three groups: control (CG), mild AD (ADG1) and moderate AD (ADG2). Participants were asked to describe the "cookie theft" picture. The total number of complete words spoken and information units (IU) were included in the analysis.ResultsThere was no significant difference among groups in terms of age, schooling and sex. For number of words spoken, the CG performed significantly better than both the ADG 1 and ADG2, but no difference between the two latter groups was found. CG produced almost twice as many information units as the ADG1 and more than double that of the ADG2. Moreover, ADG2 patients had worse performance on IUs compared to the ADG1.ConclusionDecreased performance in quantity and content of discourse was evident in patients with AD from the mildest phase, but only content (IU) continued to worsen with disease progression.

Linguagem em idosos com doença de Alzheimer: uma revisão sistemática

“…intervention of discursive disorders in people with DA 18,19 . The discussed literature provided important data on the language of people with AD.…”

Análise de aspectos micro e macrolinguísticos da narrativa de indivíduos com doença de Alzheimer, comprometimento cognitivo leve e sem comprometimentos cognitivos

“…Vários estudiosos apoiam-se na teoria de Kintsch e van Dijk (1978) e adotam o modelo de análise de componentes de micro e macroestrutura do discurso (Brandão, 2005;Lira, 2014). Assim, compõem análises tradicionais da Neurolinguística com descrições mais abrangentes da arquitetura discursiva, no estudo de lesados cerebrais.…”

“…A coesão fornece a conectividade superficial e a coerência está relacionada à conectividade do conteúdo subjacente e à relevância de conceitos (Lira, 2014).…”

“…Hier et al (1985), Ripich, Terrell (1988), Croisile et al (1996), Giles et al (1996) A presença de parafasias fonêmicas na emissão oral é pouco relatada nas fases iniciais e moderadas da DA (Nicholas et al, 1985;Glosser e Deser, 1991;Croisile et al, 1996;Forbes-Mckay, Venneri, 2005;Lira et al, 2011). Lira et al (2014) compararam a quantidade e qualidade do conteúdo do discurso de indivíduos com DA leve, moderada e controles na tarefa de descrição da prancha "Roubo dos biscoitos" (Goodglass e Kaplan, 1983). Levou-se em consideração o número total de palavras e unidades de informação.…”

“…O estudo realizado no mestrado de Toledo (2011) Entre os estudos com análise de discurso manuais destacam-se as pesquisas de Mackenzie (2000), Marini et al (2005), Forbes-McKay, Veneri (2005), Lira (2014). O estudo brasileiro de Alves, Souza (2005) analisou manualmente a descrição de figuras de indivíduos sem comprometimento cognitivo e o estudo de Parente et al (1999) analisou as tarefas de reconto de histórias.…”