Text structure and content modulate the recall of patients with dementia of the Alzheimer's type

Two descriptive and two narrative texts were constructed. The basic forms of each type of text comprised 27 micropropositions, while the detailed forms incorporated an additional 24 micropropositions. Forty DAT patients and 14 control subjects were asked to read and recall the 4 texts and the total number of micropropositions recalled was recorded. Recall performance among DATs was always inferior to that of controls. For both groups, the narrative texts yielded superior recall than the descriptive texts, while the detailed text forms elicited inferior recall than the basic forms. However, the addition of details to the narrative text increased the recall of the basic propositions of DATs, bringing it to similar levels as controls. Results are discussed with reference to the influence of text structure and the situation model on text recall.