Discourse in fluent aphasia and Alzheimer's disease: Linguistic and pragmatic considerations

What dementia reveals about proverb interpretation and its neuroanatomical correlates

“…Because proverb interpretation has been widely studied in healthy controls (e.g. Baez, Mendoza, Reyes, Matallana, & Montanes, 2009;Chapman & Thompson, 1998;Elmore & Gorham, 1957;Heinik & Aharon-Peretz, 1993;Lafleche & Albert, 1995;Santos, Sougey, & Alchieri, 2009;Santos et al 2008;Treves, Ragolsky, Gelernter, & Korczyn, 1990), and the normative data provided by the D-KEFS allow us to compare performances on proverb interpretation in disease groups relative to healthy controls, we did not find a need to recruit healthy controls for the purposes of this study.…”

The role of cognition in context-dependent language use: Evidence from Alzheimer's disease

“…Multiple discourse tasks were used because the complexity and the nature of information in and across the pictures can affect the nature and outcome of discourse production (Chapman et al, 1998;Davis et al, 1997;Smith, Chenery, & Murdoch, 1989). In addition, because deictic use is intrinsically context-dependent, it was expected that the different discourse contexts would place partially distinct linguistic and cognitive demands.…”

“…Research to date indicates that discourse changes in DAT are predominantly pragmatic in nature (e.g., difficulties in expressing communicative intentions, maintaining language and information balance, and drawing inferences) (Chapman, Highley, & Thompson, 1998). The DAT patients display difficulties in taking turns, shifting topic, and repairing speech errors during conversation (Garcia & Joanette, 1994;Ripich, Vertes, Whitehouse, Fulton, & Ekelman, 1991;Watson, Chenery, & Carter, 1999).…”

The uses of nouns and deixis in discourse production in Alzheimer's disease

“…The use of pictorial stimuli (e.g., the Cookie-theft picture (CTP), ) was considered as advantageous over other, less structured discourse production tasks (e.g., conversational, procedural), because ''more structured linguistic tasks that force the subject to respond in a particular manner may also reveal subtle deficits not apparent in spontaneous discourse'' (Ulatowska et al, 1988, p. 129). Furthermore, this study employed multiple discourse tasks to enable the experimental manipulation of the complexity and nature of information in and across pictures that can affect the outcome and nature of discourse production (Chapman et al, 1998;Davis, O'Neill-Pirozzi, & Coon, 1997;Smith, Chenery, & Murdoch, 1989). It should also be noted that the effect of task factors may vary across different discourse behaviours and in different patient populations (Bloom & Obler, 1998).…”