Understanding Social Communication Abilities in Individuals with Alzheimer's Disease

项目摘要 阿尔茨海默病和相关痴呆（ADRD）患者及其护理人员 在日常对话和社交中遇到重大挑战。然而， 了解如何有效管理这些挑战，以及可以提出哪些建议 针对ADRD患者和护理人员的策略， 优化他们的最佳沟通拟议研究的长远目标是 制定有效的管理策略，并加强护理人员的培训和教育 针对ADRD患者的治疗策略。我们建议的研究将为实现这些目标奠定基础 通过更好地了解其特点和基础机制， 社会沟通缺陷，即受众设计障碍的个人， 遗忘型阿尔茨海默病（AD）。受众设计是成功社交的关键 沟通，并涉及扬声器调制他们的话语取决于合作伙伴的 知识本研究的具体目的是：（1）了解语言和非语言的特点， AD患者和健康老年人的言语受众设计障碍，以及（2） 阐明认知和语言基板的观众设计技巧，在这些 人口。我们将部署一个实验范式，使用参照沟通任务， 在实验室中研究通信，具有高度的生态有效性，模拟自然环境的各个方面。 日常生活中的沟通。在任务中，一名参与者和一名实验者将解决一个 高度依赖于交互式和动态通信任务。参与者将 重复地向实验者描述一组抽象图像; 随着时间的推移，口头和非口头交流可以用来衡量 合作伙伴开发共享知识。参与者还将描述抽象图像， 在多方会话设置中具有不同共享知识的不同伙伴。 在沟通任务中获得的性能数据将被分析，以描述如何 AD的参与者根据他们伴侣的观点来调整他们的语言。后 参考沟通任务，一个标准化的语言和认知测试电池将被给予 来测量注意力记忆执行功能和语言将对数据集进行分析 以确定哪些认知和/或语言因素显著有助于或与 观察到的受众设计缺陷。多PI方法旨在利用 认知科学和言语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特有的资源。

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.