Task Demands and Sentence Comprehension in Patients with Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type

摘要: Patients with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) and matched normal controls were given three tests syntactic comprehension in which nonlinguistic visual memory task demands varied. In all tasks, subjects presented spoken semantically reversible sentences a variety structures required to match sentence picture. first experiment, one two pictures that appeared either before or immediately following presentation sentence. The target picture depicted correctly foil reversed thematic roles those (i.e., it was foil). second experiment employed video-verification determine if videotaped depiction action foil. third different conditions, whether single choose from an array pictures. this both lexical foils used. DAT patients affected by number propositions sentence, but not complexity Control also unaffected sentence; number-of-proposition effect present some experiments control population. Comparison performance across one-, two-, three-picture versions showed magnitude increased as increased. addition, analysis data each tasks separately only occurred when attempting (one-picture version) between (two- versions). results support view do have disturbances affecting processing. they suggest arises at stage is partially separate assigning meaning, such holding representation until can be analyzed encoded and/or comparing stored meaning.