Understanding Social Communication Abilities in Individuals with Alzheimer's Disease

项目总结 阿尔茨海默病和相关痴呆(ADRD)患者及其照顾者 在日常对话和社交交流中遇到重大挑战。然而，它却少了 了解如何有效管理这些挑战，以及可以提出哪些建议 应针对ADRD患者和照顾者制定的战略 优化他们的最佳通信。拟议研究的长远目标是： 制定有效的管理策略并磨练护理者的培训和教育 针对ADRD患者的策略。我们建议的研究将为实现这些目标奠定基础 通过更好地了解特征和基础机制来实现目标 社交沟通缺陷，即受众设计障碍的个人 遗忘性阿尔茨海默病(AD)。受众设计是社交成功的关键 交流，包括说话人对他们的话语进行调制，这取决于对方的 知识。拟议研究的具体目标是：(1)理解语言和非语言 阿尔茨海默病患者和健康老年人的言语受众设计障碍，以及(2) 阐明受众设计技能背后的认知和语言基础 人口。我们将部署一个使用参照通信任务的实验范例来 在实验室研究交流，具有高度的生态有效性，模拟自然的各个方面 日常生活中的交流。在任务中，一名参与者和一名实验者将解决 高度依赖交互和动态通信的任务。参与者将 反复向实验者描述一组抽象图像； 随着时间的推移，言语和非言语交流可以用来衡量 哪些合作伙伴开发共享知识。学员还将描述抽象图像以 在多方对话环境中，不同的合作伙伴拥有不同的共享知识。 将分析在通信任务期间获得的性能数据，以描述如何 患有AD的参与者根据他们伴侣的观点定制他们的语言。紧随其后的是 参考性交际任务、标准化语言和认知测验 测量注意力、记忆力、执行功能和语言。将对数据集进行分析 确定哪些认知和/或语言因素对认知和/或语言因素有显著影响或相关 观察到的观众设计缺陷。多PI方法旨在利用 在认知科学和言语的技术和理论方面的互补专业知识- 语言病理学，以及爱荷华州和田纳西州独有的资源。

Project summary Individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) and their caregivers experience significant challenges in daily conversations and social communication. Yet, it is less understood how these challenges can be effectively managed and what recommendations can be made with respect to the strategies for both individuals with ADRD and caregivers to optimize their optimal communication. The long-term objectives of the proposed study are to develop efficient management strategies and to hone caregiver training and education strategies for individuals with ADRD. Our proposed study will lay foundation to achieve these goals through an improved understanding of the characteristics and underpinning mechanisms of social communication deficits, namely audience design impairments in individuals with amnestic Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Audience design is a key to successful social communication and involves speaker modulation of their utterances depending on the partner’s knowledge. The specific aims of the proposed research are: (1) to understand verbal and non- verbal audience design impairments in individuals with AD and healthy older adults, and (2) elucidate cognitive and linguistic substrates underlying the audience design skills in these populations. We will deploy an experimental paradigm using referential communication tasks to study communication in the lab with a high ecological validity that simulates aspects of natural communication in everyday life. During the task, a participant and an experimenter will solve a task that is highly dependent on interactive and dynamic communication. The participant will repeatedly describe a set of abstract images to the experimenter; the changing properties of the spoken and non-verbal communication over time can be used as a measure of the extent to which partners develop shared knowledge. The participant will also describe abstract images to different partners with different shared knowledge in multiparty conversational setting. Performance data obtained during the communication task will be analyzed to delineate how participants with AD tailor their language based on their partner’s perspectives. Following the referential communication task, a standardized language and cognitive test battery will be given to measure attention, memory, executive function, and language. The data set will be analyzed to determine what cognitive and/or linguistic factors significantly contribute to or associated with the observed audience design deficits. The multi-PI approach is designed to take advantage of complementary expertise in the techniques and theories of Cognitive Science and Speech- Language Pathology, and the resources unique to both Iowa and Tennessee.