Centre for Policy on Ageing



Effects of Alzheimer's dementia on conversational ability: a case study
Author(s)	S B Makoni
Journal title	Southern African Journal of Gerontology, vol 6, no 1, April 1997
Pages	pp 7-13
Keywords	Dementia ; Cognitive processes ; Older women ; South Africa.
Annotation	This paper reports on a case study of the effects of dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) on three aspects of conversation: turn-taking, fluency and coherence. Three conversations held over a period of 12 months with an older bilingual (English and Afrikaans) woman suffering from DAT were analysed. The results showed that some aspects of conversational ability, such as turn-taking, were vulnerable to dementia and showed no sign of potential recovery unlike changes in fluency. The fluency of the subject's language use initially declined but subsequently improved to a certain degree. The capacity to respond coherently systematically broke down and the responses became increasingly aberrant. The article also highlights the problems of including conversational abilities as a separate, additional diagnostic measure of DAT.
Accession Number	CPA-971113235 A
Classmark	EA: DA: BD: 7PM
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