engleski

Speech-language Difficulty In Alzheimer's Disease Patients

The most common cause of irreversibile dementia is Alzheimer disease. Individuals with early Alzheimer's disease consistently perform poorly on test of episodic memory, such as verbal recall tasks, working memory, deficits in verbal and visuospatial tasks, and semantics memory sush as naming, category knowledge, attribute knowledge and verbal fluency. The aim of this study was to examine and compare speech-language functioning on persons with aphasia and persons with dementia. The survey comprised 6 subjects (3 aphasics, 3 AD patients) of both genders, aged between 54 and 60. In this study Everyday Life Activities, Object Photo Series (Stark, 2003.) manual was used with which we tried to provide insight in characteristics of speech-language functioning in above mentioned groups. We also wanted to see if there are any differences between them. Study material consists of four groups of tasks. Two of them are verbal and the other two are non-verbal. Verbal tasks examine comprehension and usage of prepositions and vocabulary, whereas non-verbal tasks examine the memory abilities and structure of words. Qualitative Analysis of Errors was made because of small number of examinees. All results are presented numerically and in percentages. According to our expectations AD Patients showed significantly worse results on all applied tasks than aphasia patients. Subjects with aphasia had most difficulties in tasks which were more linguistically demanding, while the subjects with dementia had difficulties also in cognitive task that examined memorizing. The group of exeminees with Alzheimer dementia achieved 16 points (22%), while the group of exeminees with aphasia achieved 50 points (70%). Considering speech-language and cognitive difficulties noticed at people with dementias, the achieved results are in concordance with various literature quotations. Memory loss is the hallmark symptom of Alzheimer disease. Although, there is a gradually worsening of semantic abilities, including increased word – finding deficits, increased use of indefinite pronouns and difficulty comprehending complex instructions. Short-term memory losses are reflacted in increased forgetting a topic conversation and receptive verbalization. All AD patients showed outstanding language difficulties, just like examinees with aphasia.

Alzheimer disease; Speech-language difficulties; aphasia; verbal tasks; non-verbal tasks

nije evidentirano