Reading comprehension in Parkinson's disease

Although individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) self-report reading problems and experience difficulties in cognitive-linguistic functions that support discourse-level reading, prior research has primarily focused on sentence-level processing and auditory comprehension. Accordingly, the authors investigated the presence and nature of reading comprehension in PD, hypothesizing that (a) individuals with PD would display impaired accuracy and/or speed on reading comprehension tests and (b) reading performances would be correlated with cognitive test results.

Eleven adults with PD and 9 age- and education-matched control participants completed tests that evaluated reading comprehension; general language and cognitive abilities; and aspects of attention, memory, and executive functioning.

The PD group obtained significantly lower scores on several, but not all, reading comprehension, language, and cognitive measures. Memory, language, and disease severity were significantly correlated with reading comprehension for the PD group.

Individuals in the early stages of PD without dementia or broad cognitive deficits can display reading comprehension difficulties, particularly for high- versus basic-level reading tasks. These reading difficulties are most closely related to memory, high-level language, and PD symptom severity status. The findings warrant additional research to delineate further the types and nature of reading comprehension impairments experienced by individuals with PD.