Morphology in Picture Descriptions Provided by Persons With Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract

The language of persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been characterized by semantic-conceptual deterioration versus structural preservation, yet the research has not examined possible differentiation between syntactic and morphological knowledge. Taking advantage of the rich morphology of Hebrew, the current paper looks at these two aspects of grammatical knowledge in descriptions of the Cookie Theft picture. Speech samples were collected from 14 persons with AD and 48 elderly control participants and analyzed for semantic, syntactic, and morphological knowledge or difficulties. Analyses showed that although persons with AD conveyed less information and made more semantic errors than did control participants, their language remained structurally rich. Persons with AD used the same syntactic structures and the same morphological forms as control participants and made very few structural errors.

Word retrieval in picture descriptions produced by individuals with Alzheimer’s disease

“…These findings are in line with previous results (e.g., Almor et al, 1999), suggesting that despite documented reduction in meaningful and relevant content in picture descriptions provided by individuals with AD (e.g., Bschor et al, 2001; Kavé & Levy, 2003; Nicholas et al, 1985), no overall reduction in output is found. Our hypothesis that individuals with AD would repeat themselves more often when providing connected speech, as has been found on verbal fluency tasks (Miozzo, Fischer-Baum, & Caccappolo-van Vliet, 2013), did not receive support from our data.…”

“…Individuals with AD have been shown to provide fewer information units that pertain to the topic at hand (e.g., Ahmed, de Jager, Haigh, & Garrard, 2013; de Lira, Minett, Bertolucci, & Ortiz, 2014; Kavé & Levy, 2003). Patients were found to commit more word errors (Forbes-McKay & Venneri, 2005),say more empty phrases and indefinite terms (Nicholas, Obler, Albert, & Helm-Estabrooks, 1985),pause more often (Davis & Maclagan, 2009), and retrieve more frequent words following pauses (Gayraud, Lee, & Barkat-Defrada, 2011)relative to healthy control participants.…”

Structurally well-formed narrative production in the face of severe conceptual deterioration: A longitudinal case study of a woman with semantic dementia

“…Importantly, in the latter two years AK had difficulty retrieving specific labels, despite the support of the picture book. AK also used a higher-than-expected proportion of pronouns relative to nouns, consistent with similar findings in narratives produced by individuals with AD (e.g., Almor et al, 1999;Kave´& Levy, 2003). Furthermore, in more than 75% of the instances of pronominal use in each of the three sessions, AK did not provide a clearly identifiable referent.…”

“…Studies of spontaneous speech in persons with AD often describe its content as ''empty'' (Nicholas, Obler, Albert, & Helm-Estabrooks, 1985), containing more words such as ''thing'' and ''do'' and fewer unique words than the speech of elderly people without AD (Hier, Hagenlocker, & Shindler, 1985). Difficulties with the retrieval of specific lexical entries within connected speech are also inferred from the increased usage of pronouns relative to other nominal expressions seen in the language of persons with AD (Almor, Kempler, MacDonald, Andersen, & Tyler, 1999;Kave´& Levy, 2003). Individuals with AD thus appear to convey an impoverished message and a limited range of content words.…”

“…Previous work on the language of individuals with AD has shown that the presence of semantic-conceptual impairments does not necessarily lead to a breakdown in form and may leave structural knowledge relatively preserved (e.g., Croisile et al, 1996;Kave´& Levy, 2003;Kempler, Curtiss, & Jackson, 1987;Rochon, Waters, & Caplan, 1994;Whitaker, 1976). AD leads to a deficit both in conveying the general propositional message and in retrieving particular lexical terms.…”