This proposed research aims to further elucidate communicative abilities in Alzheimer's disease, for both theoretical and therapeutic purposes. These studies focus on those communicative abilities that are relatively preserved in AD patients, applying them both to enhancing the investigators understanding of neurolinguistic processes in AD and to maintaining and improving the communicative abilities of AD patients. The project consists of four studies: 1) a study to determine what forms of verbal guidance are most efficacious in helping AD patients complete simple activities of daily living: 2) a study to determine how best to present discourse to AD patients to facilitate their processing; 3) a study examining the linguistic and cognitive mechanisms underlying the repetition of verbal stimuli, a relatively well-preserved ability in AD; and 4) a series of clinical case studies evaluating the functional effects of applying the principles emerging from this research in therapeutic interventions with AD patients.
| Snyder, L S; Holland, A L; Forbes, M (1996) Lexical decisions in patients with Alzheimer's disease: some notes on automatic versus controlled processing. J Commun Disord 29:389-98;quiz 398-9 |
| Fromm, D; Holland, A L; Nebes, R D et al. (1991) A longitudinal study of word-reading ability in Alzheimer's disease: evidence from the National Adult Reading Test. Cortex 27:367-76 |
