How Do Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease Describe Persons, Places and Situations? Description of Difficulties in Linguistic Communication in the Mild Stage of Dementia

Abstract

The paper presents difficulties in linguistic communication in Alzheimer’s patients (in the moderate stage dementia) on the basis of empirical studies concerning description as a form of spoken utterance, conducted in a 60-person group as part of the research project ‘Narrative and Its Disorders in the Course of Alzheimer’s Disease. The Scale of Narrative Skills as a Diagnostic Technique in Alzheimer’s Dementia (project manager: Dr Aneta Domagała; the 39th Competition of Ministry of Science and Higher Education for research projects NN10415339). The present article is the second part of the study on the linguistic abilities of patients with regard to different kinds of description (of persons, interiors, situations) from the angle of the macro- and superstructure of text (Part One of the study presented the results of analyses concerning the moderate stage of dementia – Domagała 2018). The present part, analogously (having selected the same phenomena and scopes of their analyses as previously in the cases of patients with moderate dementia) demonstrates difficulties with defining the subject of utterances that manifest themselves comparatively early (most often in the case of descriptions of situations, least often in the case of descriptions of interiors), showing their incompetence by the patients themselves, their own limitations, inability to meet the requirements related to utterance building from the macrostructural perspective (most often in the case of descriptions of situations, less frequently in the case of descriptions of interiors and descriptions of persons), significant difficulties manifested in some utterances from the superstructural angle (most
often in the case of descriptions of persons).