A Comparison on Language Processing Characteristics in Fluent Aphasics and Dementia of Alzheimer Type

Kim, Eun Jeong; Sim, Hyun Sub; Kwon, Mi Seon

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2003;8(3): 188-208.

Eun Jeong Kim^` , Hyun Sub Sim^` , and Mi Seon Kwon^`

김은정(Eun Jeong Kim)| 심현섭(Hyun Sub Sim)| 권미선(Mi Seon Kwon)

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the characteristics of language processing between the patients with fluent aphasics and with dementia of Alzheimer Type(AD). Ten fluent aphasics(9 Wernicke's and 1 transcortical sensory type) who were admin- istered K-WAB and ten AD who were administered K-MMSE participated in this study. All participating patients were selected by the auditory comprehension subtest scales of K-WAB. The tasks used in this study consisted of lexical decision task(LDT) presented auditorily and the semantic categorization task presented with pictures. The number of correct responses and error ratios on the subtypes of words were elicited and the results were analyzed by t-test. The results of the present study were as follows: (1) Both groups didn't show any significant differences in the numbers of correct responses of LDT, but the correct response performance of AD group was significantly lower than that of the fluent aphasics in semantic categorization task. (2) The analysis of error types on the two tasks indicates that the error ratios on artifact words of both groups was higher than the ratios on the words of living things and that the distinctively aphasic group showed wider gap between the error ratio on the words of living things and the ratio on artifact words than that of AD group. These results are consistent with the previous study, which insisted that aphasics have an important pathology in accessing mental lexicon and in activating semantic information, but that, on the other hand, they preserve the function of semantic system, and that AD group suffers from the loss of semantic system and semantic information. The present study seems to shed some light on the characteristics of language processing disorders and provide useful information for SLP to clinically identify the patient's pathology.