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Gestural communication in Alzheimer's disease
G Glosser1, M J Wiley, E J Barnoski
1Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, USA. glosser@mail.med.upenn.edu
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology
|July 22, 1998
Summary
Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients show impaired gestural communication, producing more ambiguous and fewer complex gestures than healthy controls (NC). This supports a central semantic disorder affecting both speech and gestures in AD.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Linguistics
Background:
- Spontaneous communicative gestures are linked to semantic-conceptual representations.
- Alzheimer's disease (AD) is associated with semantic memory impairment.
- Similar impairments in linguistic and gestural communication are hypothesized in AD.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate spontaneous communicative hand-arm gestures in elderly patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) and healthy controls (NC).
- To determine if qualitative differences in gestural production exist between AD patients and NC.
- To explore the relationship between gestural impairments and linguistic/conceptual deficits in AD.
Main Methods:
- Evaluated spontaneous hand-arm gestures in elderly patients with probable AD and healthy controls (NC).
- Compared the quantity, rate, and types of gestures produced by both groups.
- Assessed correlations between gestural clarity, linguistic impairments, and ideomotor limb apraxia.
Main Results:
- AD patients and NC groups exhibited similar quantity and rate of gesturing.
- Patients with AD produced proportionately more referentially ambiguous gestures.
- AD patients produced fewer metaphoric and conceptually complex bimanual gestures compared to NC.
- Impaired gestural clarity in AD correlated with linguistic/conceptual impairments and apraxia.
Conclusions:
- Results support a central semantic-conceptual disorder underlying communication impairments in AD.
- Gestural communication deficits are qualitatively different in AD, reflecting semantic processing issues.
- Gesture production, like speech, is affected by semantic memory decline in Alzheimer's disease.