Syntactic Preservation in Alzheimer's Disease

Kempler, Daniel; Curtiss, Susan; Jackson, Catherine A.

doi:10.1044/jshr.3003.343

Cited by 172 publications

(112 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…A number of studies have indicated that DAT individuals have a decreased ability to use context to disambiguate words (Balota & Duchek, 1991;Cushman & Caine, 1987;Kempler et al, 1987). We have also found that DAT individuals can take advantage of contextual constraints to enhance the appropriate meanings of ambiguous words.…”

Section: Dat and Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…If DAT individuals were unable to represent effectively sentential context, then one might expect that they would suffer greater interference from contextually inappropriate meanings of ambiguous words because of their inability to use poorly represented context as a basis for discriminating between appropriate and inappropriate meanings. Previous studies have suggested that DAT individuals do have a decreased ability to use context to disambiguate words (Balota & Duchek, 1991;Cushman & Caine, 1987;Kempler, Curtiss, & Jackson, 1987). An impoverished representation of context may have caused less suppression of inappropriate meanings for DAT individuals than for healthy older individuals who presumably can effectively use context as a basis to suppress contextually inappropriate meanings.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Inhibitory Control during Sentence Comprehension in Individuals with Dementia of the Alzheimer Type

Faust

Balota²,

Duchek³

et al. 1997

Brain and Language

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In two experiments we investigated the extent to which individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer type (OAT) manage the activation of contextually appropriate and inappropriate meanings of ambiguous words during sentence comprehension. OAT individuals and healthy older individuals read sentences that ended in ambiguous words and then determined if a test word fit the overall meaning of the sentence. Analysis of response latencies indicated that OAT individuals were less efficient than healthy older individuals at suppressing inappropriate meanings of ambiguous words not implied by sentence context, but enhanced appropriate meanings to the same extent, if not more, than healthy older adults. DAT individuals were also more likely to allow inappropriate information to actually drive responses (i.e., increased intrusion errors). Overall, the results are consistent with a growing number of studies demonstrating impairments in inhibitory control, with relative preservation offacilitatory processes, in DAT.A decline in the ability of individuals with senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) to comprehend written and spoken language is one of severallanguage deficits documented in studies of language ability (e.g., Murdoch, Chenery, Wilks, & Boyle, 1987;Appell, Kertesz, & Fisman, 1982). While word naming abilities are relatively well preserved during the early stages of DAT, reading comprehension declines with dementia severity (Cummings, Houlihan, & Hill, 1986). The decline of language comprehension in DAT may be, in part, due to a disruption of retrieval from semantic memory (e.g., Nebes, Boller, & Holland, 1986;Nebes, Brady, & Huff, 1989) or to a degradation of the representations of concepts Copyright © 1997 and words in semantic memory (e.g., Martin & Fedio, 1983;Chertkow, Bub, & Seidenberg, 1989;Gewirth &Shindler, 1984;Flicker,Ferris, Crook,&Bartus, 1987), or possibly, both (see Nebes, 1989, for a recent review). However, evidence is accumulating to suggest that individuals in the early stages of DAT also suffer from a loss in the efficiency of cognitive mechanisms responsible for the management of the activation of or accessibility to information on-line during comprehension. For example, Morris and Baddeley (1988; see also Helkala, Laulumaa, Soininen, & Riekkinen, 1989) argued that the memory impairment found in early DAT may in part be due to a deficit in working memory. More specifically, Morris and Baddeley argued that the Central Executive portion of working memory (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974) is "responsible for initiating and modulating the different mental processes associated with working memory and has a high degree of complexity which might make it especially vulnerable to the effects of dementia" (Morris & Baddeley, 1988, p. 284).Several models of language comprehension have stressed the importance of the ability to manage information on-line during the comprehension process (e.g., Gernsbacher, 1990Gernsbacher, , 1991 Carpenter & Just, 1988;Hasher & Zacks, 1988;Kintsch, 1988). Gernsbache...

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Section: Dat and Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 73%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inhibitory Control during Sentence Comprehension in Individuals with Dementia of the Alzheimer Type

Faust

Balota²,

Duchek³

et al. 1997

Brain and Language

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“…Studies of grammatical processing in AD have been controversial. Some work shows successful processing of syntax and grammar in these patients (Blanken, Dittman, Haas, & Wallesch, 1987;Illes, 1990;Irigaray, 1973;Kemper, LaBarge, Ferraro, Cheung, & Storandt, 1993;Kempler, Curtiss, & Jackson, 1987), while other reports describe grammatical impairments (Croot, Hodges, & Patterson, 1999;Emery & Breslau, 1989;Kempler, Almor, Tyler, Andersen, & MacDonald, 1998;Rochon, Waters, & Caplan, 1994). We and others find that AD patients have difficulty with grammatical processing, but experimental evidence attributes this to a limitation of the executive resources needed to process long-distance grammatical dependencies in a sentence.…”

Section: Preserved Grammatical Processing Of Novel Form Class Knowledmentioning

confidence: 84%

Verb acquisition and representation in Alzheimer's disease

et al. 2007

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We examined the implicit acquisition and mental representation of a novel verb in patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD). Patients were exposed to the new verb in a naturalistic manner as part of a simple picture story. We probed grammatical, semantic and thematic matrix knowledge of the verb soon after presentation and again one week later. We found partial verb acquisition that was retained over one week. AD patients did not differ from controls in their acquisition and retention of a new verb's major grammatical subcategory, although they acquired little of its semantic properties and displayed minimal acquisition of the new word's thematic matrix. Moreover, AD patients appeared to maintain their acquired grammatical knowledge over one week. We discuss the implications of these findings from several perspectives, including the modularity of the language processing system, the relationship between episodic memory and semantic memory, and the role of the preserved implicit memory system in AD patients' partially successful lexical acquisition.

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“…Interesting is the repeated observation that the grammatical aspects of language are largely spared in the early stages of Alzheimer disease (Appel, Kertesy, & Fishman, 1982;Kempler, Curtiss, & Jackson, 1987;Murillo Ruiz, 1999). Grammar is eventually degraded together with the progressive breakdown of conceptual aspects of language and the complete collapse of pragmatic regulation (Maxim & Bryan, 1994).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language in ageing persons with Down syndrome

Rondal¹,

Comblain²

2002

Downs Syndr. Res. Pract.

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-Several cross-sectional studies and one longitudinal study were conducted on the language abilities of various cohorts of persons with Down syndrome aged between 14 and 50 years. No signifi cant difference was observed on any of the receptive and productive morphosyntactic and lexical measures used, suggesting no marked change in the language of these persons from adolescence onto late adulthood. Repeated measures of cerebral metabolic rate (CMR) for fl uorodeoxyglucose using a Positron Emission Tomography were made over a 4-year interval with 7 participants with Down syndrome aged between 37 and 49 years. A gradual decrease in global CMR for both cerebral hemispheres and for each participant was documented. It was particularly marked for 3 participants. However, no language deterioration could be associated with their marked lowering in CMR.

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Syntactic Preservation in Alzheimer's Disease

Cited by 172 publications

References 22 publications

Inhibitory Control during Sentence Comprehension in Individuals with Dementia of the Alzheimer Type

Inhibitory Control during Sentence Comprehension in Individuals with Dementia of the Alzheimer Type

Verb acquisition and representation in Alzheimer's disease

Language in ageing persons with Down syndrome

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