LEXICAL SEMANTICS AND ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE (AGING, DEMENTIA, GERONTOLOGY, COMMUNICATIONS, SENILE DEMENTIA).
Item
-
Title
-
LEXICAL SEMANTICS AND ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE (AGING, DEMENTIA, GERONTOLOGY, COMMUNICATIONS, SENILE DEMENTIA).
-
Identifier
-
AAI8508690
-
identifier
-
8508690
-
Creator
-
CLARK, LYNNE WILSON.
-
Contributor
-
Edgar Zurif
-
Date
-
1985
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Health Sciences, Speech Pathology
-
Abstract
-
Individuals with Alzheimer's disease suffer from a clinical naming impairment. However, very little is known about the actual form their naming impairment takes, the processing deficits that underlie their naming difficulty or what the relationship of their naming impairment is to their other known cognitive and neuropathological changes. Moreover, the healthy elderly population also exhibit changes in naming. Thus it remains unresolved as to whether the naming impairment in Alzheimer's disease is related to the normal aging changes.;To investigate these issues in both the Alzheimer's disease and healthy elderly populations, specific clinical, laboratory, experimental and correlational measures were designed and implemented. The clinical and laboratory tasks measured language, (i.e., Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Exam and Boston Naming Test), cognitive (i.e., Orientation, Memory Concentration Test) and neuroradiological/electrical functions (i.e., CAT, EEG).;Four experimental tasks systematically, assessed the ability to deal with various facets of a word's meaning: (1) a nonverbal perceptual triad object comparison sorting task (i.e., Similarity of Judgment) assessed the ability to integrate, semantically relevant perceptual information that embodies a concept; (2) a word-object labeling task (i.e., Labeling) assessed how the ability to integrate relevant perceptual and functional information that embodies an object related to object name recognition ability; (3. & 4.) a speeded category classification (i.e., Categorization) and speeded real word - nonword decision (i.e., Lexical Decision) tasks assessed the ability to trace meaning relations among words when automatic and conscious lexical decisions were required.;Conceptual problems were clearly evidenced by the Alzheimer's subjects' impaired performances on the measures of clinical vocabulary usage and cognitive function, neuropathological changes and the Similarity of Judgment Task. The strong interrelations that existed among these measures revealed that the naming impairment in Alzheimer's Disease could not be divorced from their larger conceptually based problems.;In contrast to the Alzheimer's subjects, the healthy elderly subjects who demonstrated subtle clinical changes in verbal vocabulary usage, performed more like young normal adults on the Similarity and Labeling Tasks. However as seen by their impaired performances on the Lexical Decision and Categorization Tasks, their lexical semantic knowledge was not well structured for its full use in tracing meaning relations among words.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
Speech & Hearing
