Kaltsa Maria, Tsolaki Anthoula, Lazarou Ioulietta, Mittas Ilias, Papageorgiou Mairi, Papadopoulou Despina, Tsimpli Ianthi Maria, Tsolaki Magda
Department of Theoretical & Applied Linguistics, School of English, Faculty of Philosophy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece.
School of Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece.
J Alzheimers Dis Rep. 2024 Jul 31;8(1):1115-1132. doi: 10.3233/ADR-230204. eCollection 2024.
Earlier research focuses primarily on the cognitive changes due to Alzheimer's disease (AD); however, little is known with regard to changes in language competence across the lifespan.
The present study aims to investigate the decline of language skills at the grammatical and syntactic levels due to changes in cognitive function.
We administered the Litmus Sentence Repetition Task (SRT) to 150 native speakers of Greek who fall into five groups: 1) young healthy speakers, 2) cognitively intact elder healthy speakers, 3) speakers with subjective cognitive impairment (SCI), 4) speakers with mild cognitive impairment (MCI); and 5) speakers with AD dementia at the mild/moderate stages. All participants underwent a physical and neurological examination and cognitive screening with a standardized neuropsychological battery to assess cognitive status comprehensively and evaluate aspects like working memory, executive function, attention and memory to appropriately classify them.
The data analysis revealed that the SRT had high discriminatory value in the development of AD; specifically, both accuracy and grammaticality indices were related to cognitive decline. Additionally, syntax significantly affected the performance of speakers with structures such as clitics being particularly challenging and in most structures the performance of speakers with MCI drops significantly compared to speakers with SCI.
Linguistic indices revealed subtle early signs of cognitive decline that can be helpful in the early detection of AD, thus facilitating the clinical process offering support to language-based assessment tools such as sentence repetition, a non-invasive type of assessment to evaluate symptoms of AD.
早期研究主要关注阿尔茨海默病（AD）导致的认知变化；然而，关于整个生命周期语言能力的变化却知之甚少。
本研究旨在调查由于认知功能变化导致的语法和句法层面语言技能的衰退情况。
我们对150名以希腊语为母语的人进行了石蕊句子重复任务（SRT），这些人分为五组：1）年轻健康者；2）认知功能完好的老年健康者；3）主观认知障碍（SCI）者；4）轻度认知障碍（MCI）者；5）轻度/中度阶段的AD痴呆患者。所有参与者都接受了体格和神经学检查，并使用标准化神经心理测验进行认知筛查，以全面评估认知状态，并评估工作记忆、执行功能、注意力和记忆力等方面，以便对他们进行适当分类。
数据分析表明，SRT在AD的发展过程中具有很高的鉴别价值；具体而言，准确性和语法性指标均与认知衰退有关。此外，句法对说话者的表现有显著影响，诸如附着词等结构尤其具有挑战性，并且在大多数结构中，与SCI患者相比，MCI患者的表现显著下降。
语言指标揭示了认知衰退的细微早期迹象，这有助于AD的早期检测，从而促进临床进程，为基于语言的评估工具（如句子重复）提供支持，句子重复是一种评估AD症状的非侵入性评估方法。
