Sentence Comprehension and Its Association with Executive Functions in Patients with Parkinson's Disease

Abstract

Coexistent impairments in executive functions and language comprehension in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) have been repeatedly observed. In this study, the aim was to provide insights into the interaction between linguistic representation and processing and executive functioning. Therefore, sentence comprehension and executive functions were assessed in 28 Dutch-speaking PD patients and 28 healthy control subjects. Three aspects of the sentence materials were varied: (1) phrase structure complexity, (2) sentence length, and (3) picture congruence. PD patients with mild-to-moderate disease severity showed decreased sentence comprehension compared to healthy control subjects. The difficulties encountered by PD patients were not limited to one aspect of the sentence materials. The same pattern of results was present in healthy control subjects. Deficits in set-switching were specifically associated with the comprehension of passive sentences. Generally, our study confirms that there does not appear to be a language faculty encapsulated from the influence of executive functions.

Syntax, action verbs, action semantics, and object semantics in Parkinson's disease: Dissociability, progression, and executive influences

“…Similar findings have been reported in other studies with PD patients (Angwin et al, 2006;Colman et al, 2011;Grossman, 1999;Grossman, Zurif, et al, 2002;Hochstadt et al, 2006;Lee et al, 2003) and healthy participants (Boudewyn, Long, & Swaab, 2012;Gernsbacher & Faust, 1991;Moser, Fridriksson, & Healy, 2007).…”

“…We assessed linguistic (syntactic processing, action-verb production) and semantic (actionaction and object-object association) skills using tasks which have proven sensitive to subtle impairments in neurodegenerative motor disorders, including PD (Cardona et al, 2013;Colman, Koerts, Stowe, Leenders, & Bastiaanse, 2011;Cotelli et al, 2007;Ibáñez et al, 2013;Lieberman et al, 1990), Huntington's disease (Kargieman et al, 2014;Saldert, Fors, Stroberg, & Hartelius, 2010), and motor neuron disease (Bak & Hodges, 2004;Cobble, 1998). All tasks were administered in Spanish, the participants' mother tongue.…”

Parkinson's patients’ executive profile and goals they set for improvement: Why is cognitive rehabilitation not common practice?

“…However, the finding that patients with PD set more "Communication" goals could possibly also be explained as a disease-specific characteristic. Some studies have found problems with production and comprehension of language to be common in PD and to be related to impairments in EF (Colman et al, 2009;Colman, Koerts, Stowe, Leenders, & Bastiaanse, 2011).…”

Reading Comprehension in Parkinson's Disease

“…Collectively, current evidence demonstrates that difficulties with comprehension at the sentence level are common in PD (e.g., Bhat et al, 2001;Colman et al, 2011). Problems at a discourse level are possible as well (Murray & Stout, 1999;Monetta et al, 2009) but have not yet received as much empirical investigation.…”

“…Problems at a discourse level are possible as well (Murray & Stout, 1999;Monetta et al, 2009) but have not yet received as much empirical investigation. Furthermore, with few exceptions, these comprehension deficits have been investigated through listening rather than reading tasks (Colman et al, 2011;Geyer & Grossman, 1994;Grossman et al, 2000Grossman et al, , 2002Hochstadt et al, 2006;Tremblay et al, 2012), even though many individuals with PD self-report difficulties with reading (Davidsdottir, Cronin-Golomb, & Lee, 2005;Hunt, Sadun, & Bass, 1995;Pagonabarraga & Kulisevsky, 2012;Seichepine et al, 2011). Consequently, whether individuals with PD experience difficulties with written material, particularly at the discourse level, remains unresolved.…”