Hanna K. Ulatowska

Disruption of reference in aging

A homogeneous sample of normal adults living in a religious order in a study of age effects on reference as a cohesive device in discourse production and comprehension. Narrative and procedural discourse were examined across various levels of complexity and stimulus/response requirements. Results indicate that significant ambiguity of reference emerges in the younger elderly group (age 64-76) in comparison to the middle-aged group (age 27 to 55), and increases markedly in the older elderly group (age 77-92). Related impairments of comprehension and cognition were also observed. These findings are interpreted to be general features of linguistic variation with advancing age. Communicative consequences of ambiguous reference are discussed.

Narrative and Procedural Discourse in Aphasia

Current interest in discourse performance has been motivated by the explanatory power provided by recent developments in discourse grammar. Discourse, unlike sentences, does not have a strict set of rules that specify grammaticality. Nor does discourse have a specified length. Although discourse is often described as a series of connected sentences, it may be a single word, a phrase, a sentence, or an infinite combination of all these forms. The length is specified in terms of communicative function (i.e., discourse is a unit of language that conveys a message). Discourse grammar provides a linguistic description of the properties that contribute to acceptability or well-formedness of discourse. There are several discourse types (e.g., narrative, procedural, expository, and conversational) that differ in structure and information content.

Discourse performance in older adults.

Thirty-three elderly women, whose mean age was 76.2 years, and eighteen middle-aged women, whose mean age was 45.6 years, were assessed on a number of linguistic discourse tasks. The women were well educated, and most of them were or had been engaged in the teaching profession. Each woman was given 1) narrative discourse tasks involving recall of stories, summarizing stories, giving the morals of the stories, 2) procedural discourse tasks, 3) interview to assess cognitive functioning and communicative abilities, and 4) the following cognitive tests: Block Design, Symbol-Digit, Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices, and Word Fluency. The findings were that the older group generally performed more poorly than did the middle-aged group on most of the discourse tasks and cognitive tests. Within the older group, measures of quality of discourse were generally negatively related to age and positively related to scores on cognitive tests.

Perceptual, cognitive and linguistic development after early hemispherectomy: two case studies.

Abstract Longitudinal data on perceptual-motor, cognitive, and linguistic functioning is reported for two children: one with right hemispherectomy and one with left hemispherectomy. Both levels of functioning and specific profiles of abilities within an area of function are evaluated. The subjects both show effects from damage to the brain: shortened memory span, general perceptual and motor disabilities, and somewhat depressed general intellectual functioning. Areas of comparative strength and weakness in functioning in the two subjects are suggestive of adult patterns of hemispheric specialization, despite the young age of the subjects at the time of brain damage.

Discourse in healthy old-elderly adults: A longitudinal study

This longitudinal study investigated discourse abilities in 16 normal adults in their 80s and 90s at two separate testing times. The discourse tasks evaluated macro-level processing of narratives as manifested on retells, summaries, gists, and morals, and in explanations of proverbs. The group results showed preservation with increased age on those discourse tasks that required global levels of processing. No significant decreases in performance were found in applying strategies of reduction, generalization, and interpretation, factors associated with preserved discourse function in normal advanced ageing are discussed. The findings have implications for differential diagnosis of dementia and aphasia.

Discourse in Early Alzheimer's Disease Versus Normal Advanced Aging

The present study compared discourse ability across three groups: patients with mild Alzheimers disease (AD), healthy old-elderly individuals (OE, >80 years), and normal control subjects (NC). Dis...

Making stories: Evaluative language and the aphasia experience

Background: Language used for expressing feelings and opinions—so‐called evaluative language—is essential to the expression of the individuals identity. Illness narratives involving evaluative language are known to be important vehicles for coping with identity change during chronic illness, as well as reflecting on and sharing the experience. However, relatively little is known about the aphasic persons ability to engage in such narratives—in particular, the effects of their language difficulties on this endeavour. Aims: This study discusses different types of evaluative language and ways in which they are relatively impaired or preserved in aphasia, focusing on stroke narrative. Methods & Procedures: Examples from the stroke stories of three aphasic speakers are used as illustrations of their evaluative abilities. The stories were analysed according to evaluative language categories defined by Labov (1972) and Martin (2003). The function of each of these categories is described in terms of its contribution to the emotive nature of the discourse. Outcomes & Results: The aphasic speakers were successful in using evaluative language and used similar devices to non‐brain‐damaged speakers. However, the realisation of the devices was simplified at both lexical and syntactic levels and in terms of quantity. Conclusions: Emotive/evaluative language promises a different perspective on language usage across speakers of differing levels of severity for both assessment and treatment purposes. We will discuss implications of the use of emotive recounts in the clinical situation for facilitating language and working through identity issues.

Discourse Performance in Subjects with Dementia of the Alzheimer Type

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of investigations concerned with the language abilities of demented patients. These studies have suggested that the linguistic deficits in demented subjects may be specific rather than global. It appears that certain levels of language are disrupted, while others may be relatively spared. The majority of research has focused on lexical retrieval, although other aspects of linguistic functioning have been examined as well.

Proverb interpretation in fluent aphasia and Alzheimer's disease: Implications beyond abstract thinking

This study compared proverb processing across three groups, i.e. patients with fluent aphasia (APH), patients with Alzheimers Disease (AD), and normal control subjects (NC). Proverb stimuli were used to examine the effects of group membership and proverb familiarity in two presentation formats (i.e. spontaneous versus multiple-choice) on performance. The sensitivity of cognitive measures as predictors of ability to interpret proverbs was also investigated. In relation to NC subjects, patients with fluent APH exhibited significant difficulty formulating responses for familiar and unfamiliar spontaneous proverbs, whereas patients with AD demonstrated lower performance only on the unfamiliar proverbs. On the multiple-choice paradigm, however, patients with APH exhibited minimal difficulty. Conversely, the patients with AD manifested significant problems selecting the correct abstract response for familiar proverbs. With regard to predictors, language was relevant to familiar proverb interpretations and to proverbs presented in the spontaneous format. Cognition was a sensitive predictor for unfamiliar proverb interpretations and to the multiple-choice format. Deficits on the proverb tasks are discussed with reference to the potential breakdown of underlying linguistic and cognitive processes. The present data support the diagnostic value of proverbs in elucidating brain- behaviour relationships.

Disruption of written language in aphasia: a case study.

This study documents the performance of a Wernicke aphasic on production of written discourse. The discourse data consisted of spontaneously produced texts of three different types: narrative discourse, personal and formal letters, and expository discourse. A detailed description of the language of this aphasic at a sentence and discourse level revealed preservation of discourse structure through proper use of cohesive devices despite severe disruption of linguistic structure at a sentence level.