ERIC Number: EJ730838
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2004-Jan
Pages: 20
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0093-934X
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Verb Deficits in Alzheimer's Disease and Agrammatism: Implications for Lexical Organization
Kim, Mikyong; Thompson, Cynthia K.
Brain and Language, v88 n1 p1-20 Jan 2004
This study examined the nature of verb deficits in 14 individuals with probable Alzheimer's Disease (PrAD) and nine with agrammatic aphasia. Production was tested, controlling both semantic and syntactic features of verbs, using noun and verb naming, sentence completion, and narrative tasks. Noun and verb comprehension and a grammaticality judgment task also were administered. Results showed that while both PrAD and agrammatic subjects showed impaired verb naming, the syntactic features of verbs (i.e., argument structure) influenced agrammatic, but not Alzheimer's disease patients' verb production ability. That is, agrammatic patients showed progressively greater difficulty with verbs associated with more arguments, as has been shown in previous studies (e.g., Kim & Thompson, 2000; Thompson, 2003; Thompson, Lange, Schneider, & Shapiro, 1997), and suggest a syntactic basis for verb production deficits in agrammatism. Conversely, the semantic complexity of verbs affected PrAD, but not agrammatic, patients' performance, suggesting ''bottom-up'' breakdown in their verb lexicon, paralleling that of nouns, resulting from the degradation or loss of semantic features of verbs.
Descriptors: Alzheimers Disease, Verbs, Semantics, Aphasia, Syntax, Nouns, Patients, Sentences, Linguistic Performance, Grammar
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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