Department of Educational Sciences (DISFOR), Psychology Unit, Corso Podestà 2, University of Genoa, 16128 Genoa, Italy.
IRCCS Policlinico San Martino, Largo Benzi 10, 16132 Genoa, Italy; Department of Experimental Medicine (DIMES), Section of Human Physiology, Via Leon Battista Alberti 2, University of Genoa, 16132 Genoa, Italy.
Brain Cogn. 2021 Jun;150:105706. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2021.105706. Epub 2021 Mar 21.
Language impairment in Parkinson's disease (PD) has been investigated at different levels of linguistic skills. Only a few studies dealt with pragmatic abilities in PD, and these suggest an impairment of pragmatic skills, which might affect quality of life. However, previous studies enrolled patients with heterogeneous symptom severity. The goal of this study is twofold: first, to investigate whether pragmatic skills are compromised at the early stage of PD; second, to explore whether an early pragmatic impairment is explained by a decay of a specific cognitive function. We assessed pragmatic abilities (discourse production, comprehension of narratives, humour, and figurative language), and a cluster of cognitive functions (memory, verbal fluency, inhibition, shifting, and ToM) in a sample of early PD patients and a group of age-matched healthy controls. Early PD patients showed impaired general pragmatic skills (the ability to perform different pragmatic tasks in language production and comprehension), as well as a deficit in the production and comprehension individual scores. Our results suggest that good general cognitive skills (a good overall cognitive level) and high education support patients' pragmatic competence. Inhibitory processes have been found to predict patients' ability to understand figurative language, such as metaphors, and this might be related to frontal lobe dysfunctions.
帕金森病（PD）患者的语言障碍已在不同语言技能水平上得到研究。只有少数研究涉及 PD 患者的语用能力，这些研究表明他们的语用技能受损，这可能会影响生活质量。然而，之前的研究纳入了症状严重程度不同的患者。本研究的目的有两个：首先，研究 PD 的早期阶段是否存在语用技能障碍；其次，探讨早期语用障碍是否可以用特定认知功能的衰退来解释。我们评估了早期 PD 患者和年龄匹配的健康对照组的语用能力（话语生成、叙事理解、幽默和比喻语言）和一系列认知功能（记忆、词汇流畅性、抑制、转换和心理理论）。早期 PD 患者表现出一般语用技能受损（在语言生成和理解中执行不同语用任务的能力），以及个体分数的生成和理解方面的缺陷。我们的结果表明，良好的一般认知技能（较高的整体认知水平）和较高的教育水平支持患者的语用能力。抑制过程被发现可以预测患者理解隐喻等比喻语言的能力，这可能与额叶功能障碍有关。
