PILOT--LANGUAGE PROCESSING IN BILINGUAL ALZHEIMER'S PATIENTS

神经功能障碍患者双语能力的研究 （主要是单侧局灶性病变）已经产生了一些混合的 调查结果。 这包括两种语文同时出现故障的情况， 患者的语言中只有一种（第一或第二） 另一种语言相对较少，最初两种语言都失去了 具有差异恢复的语言（即，一种语言提高更多 比另一个）。 双语广告的使用提供了一个机会， 确定神经损伤下语言崩溃的性质， 以下三个原因。 首先，AD患者患有 进行性双侧皮质退化 这提供 与单侧患者的研究相比， 局灶性病变 第二，早期识别患者 AD的阶段将使我们能够识别语言优势的模式， 在疾病结束之前 最后，渐进性 的AD应有助于阐明不同的模式维护 和损失，观察到在两个病人的语言在不同的 时间点。 两个在线任务将用于测试双语 语言处理 在跨模态单词发音范例中， 受试者将呈现听觉文本，并在文本中进行探索 语义或语言上一致和不一致的词。 的 第二个在线任务，句子解释任务，是一个被迫的选择 要求受试者选择句子主题的任务 有两个名词和一个动词 这两个范例将与AD一起使用 患者和老年对照组。 AD患者仅接受一次检测。 这个纵向设计应该为我们提供了必要的信息 关于弥漫性神经损伤对 双语AD患者的句法和语义保留或故障。 这些结果与正常老年对照组和 大学年龄控制，应有助于揭示老龄化的影响， 痴呆症对双语语言处理的影响

The study of bilingualism in individuals with neurological dysfunction (primarily unilateral focal lesions) has yielded a number of mixed findings. These include cases of parallel breakdown in both languages, breakdown of only one of a patient's languages (either first or second) with a relative sparing of the other language, and initial loss of both languages with differential recovery (i.e. one language improves more than the other). The use of bilingual AD offers an opportunity to better identify the nature of language breakdown under neurological insult for the following three reasons. First of all, patients with AD suffer from progressive bilateral patterns of cortical degeneration. This provides a larger homogeneity than studies with patients suffering form unilateral focal lesions. Second, the identification of patients in the early stages of AD will permit us to identify patterns of language dominance before the disease has run its course. Finally, the progressive nature of AD should help to elucidate the differential patterns of maintenance and loss that are observed in both of a patient's languages at various points in time. Two on-line tasks will be used to test bilingual language processing. In the cross-modal word pronunciation paradigm, subjects will presented with auditory texts and probed during the text with semantically or linguistically congruent and incongruent words. The second on-line task, the sentence interpretation task, is a forced choice task in which subjects will be asked to pick the subject of sentences with two nouns and a verb. These two paradigms will be employed with AD patients and elderly controls. AD patients will be tested only once. This longitudinal design should provide us the essential information about the effect of diffuse neurological insult on the pattern of syntactic and semantic sparing or breakdown in bilingual AD patients. These results, when compared to those of normal elderly controls and college aged controls, should help to reveal the impact of aging and dementia on bilingual language processing.