Faculty Bibliography

Background: Cognitive and language processes in dementia have been studied extensively, but motor speech degeneration in the course of dementing illness has been relatively unexplored. The potential for early dissociation of motor functions of language at the level of speech production has not been explored extensively in the research literature. Case presentation: In an earlier pilot study of temporal structure in the speech of persons with dementia, in which our participants produced a series of short phrases that included a target word beginning with a fricative or voiced or voiceless stop consonant and ending with either /t/ or /d/, this subject demonstrated inconsistent final lengthening and effects of final consonant voicing on vowel duration, as well as a voice onset time (VOT) pattern that suggested a reduced distinction between American English /b/ and /p/. Analysis of recordings of this subject made six months later revealed a number of additional changes in sentence- and phrase-timing patterns, changes that were not observed in the earlier recording. Conclusions: An interaction between motor speech and language production and perception changes such as that found in this case study informs our understanding of the deterioration in dementia

Alzheimer's disease is marked by loss of semantic memory. The neuropsychological experimental task known as priming (wherein recognition or recall is enhanced by prior exposure) is a pure measure of semantic memory. The study of the nature of the underlying semantic memory impairment in dementia has progressed through the contribution of the priming literature. This article will review past and current trends in priming research specifically related to Alzheimer's disease. The me - tho dologies and findings of previous experimental literature will be discussed in attempts to demonstrate the controversies and scientific evidence-building regarding the language deterioration in dementia of the Alzheimer's type

This article examines creative aftercare for aphasia patients. Individuals suffering from aphasia often regain pre-stroke language skills later than the allotted treatment regime so community-based support groups have come into being after insurance runs out. A program featuring creative treatments at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City is described

The ability of 12 patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) and 18 healthy elderly (HE) controls to access and use semantic knowledge was assessed via a lexical decision task, comparing ISI manipulations within two attention-dependent priming tasks. The DAT patients exhibited evidence of intact semantic priming in the attention-dependent condition when the interstimulus interval was 1500 msec. However, they did not demonstrate priming in the attention-dependent condition when the interstimulus interval was 500 msec. This is in contrast to the healthy elderly controls, who exhibited priming effects in both conditions. The qualitative and quantitative differences in semantic priming behavior between these two subject groups are described. The implications of these findings for the nature of the language deterioration that occurs in early dementia of the Alzheimer's type are discussed. The possibility that the hyperpriming effect obtained in the DAT subjects was due to inhibition related to difficulty with re-direction of lexical search is considered