The Comparison of Morpho-Syntactic Patterns Device Comprehension in Speech of Alzheimer and Normal Elderly People

Abstract

Background: Alzheimer’s disease can give rise to aphasia and difficulties with word finding, naming, and word comprehension. Also it can affect the comprehension of morpho-syntactic patterns device as one of cohesive devices. Objectives: The purpose of this research is to investigate and compare the comprehension of sub-devices of morpho-syntactic patterns in the speech of Persian-speaking elderly people with Alzheimer’s disease and the normal elderly based on Dooley and Levinson’s perspective. Sub-devices of morpho-syntactic patterns include consistency of inflectional categories, echoic utterances and discourse-pragmatic structuring. Methods: This descriptive-analytic and cross-sectional research conducted on the speech of 12 elderly people comprising 6 Alzheimer and 6 normal individuals 74 to 90 years old who were selected using available sampling method. The data was analyzed by SPSS software and T-test. Results: The findings indicate, except for the consistency of inflectional categories (P = 0.017), in other two subsets including echoic utterances (P = 0.411) and discourse-pragmatic structuring (P = 0.245). However, in overall analysis of this device (P = 0.026). Conclusions: This study supports the conclusion that there is a significant difference between the comprehension of Morpho-syntactic patterns device as a whole in the speech of Persian speaking Alzheimer’s and normal elderly people.