Language skills and communication failure in senile dementia

The present research was undertaken with two major purposes in mind. The first purpose was to describe the communication problems associated with senile dementia in a broader way (i.e. across more aspects of communication) than typically has been done in previous American studies. To achieve this purpose, the communication behavior of a group of adults with senile dementia and of a group of age matched elderly normals was sampled during two different communication tasks: spontaneous conversation and a communication game. Overall communication success of the two groups was determined. In addition, the groups were compared using measures of communication efficiency and learning and using measures of speech, grammar, vocabulary, and several other language categories. Second, this research was undertaken to determine an appropriate impairment index in senile dementia so that future studies can explore communication variation in demented subjects of comparable severity levels. Since such an index does not currently exist, several established measures of impairment in other communication-related domains were administered and correlations determined between each measure and scores on the communication tasks. The data generated from this research suggested which aspects of communication are most vulnerable to the effects of senile dementia and which aspects remain relatively well preserved. In addition, identification of appropriate measures of the severity of communication impairment in dementia has paved the way for future research to determine communicative variability both within and between subjects at various levels of declineCommunication Sciences and Disorder