Gestural Communication in Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract

Spontaneous communicative hand-arm gestures were evaluated in elderly patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) and healthy controls (NC). Based on the notion that speech and gestures arise from common semantic-conceptual representations, qualitatively similar linguistic and gestural communicative impairments were expected in association with semantic memory impairment in AD. Despite equal quantity and rate of gesturing, AD and NC groups produced qualitatively different types of gestures. Patients with AD produced proportionately more referentially ambiguous gestures, fewer gestures referring to metaphoric as opposed to concrete contents, and fewer conceptually complex bimanual gestures. Impaired gestural clarity correlated with severity of linguistic/conceptual impairments and disturbed production of pantomimic movements on a test of ideomotor limb apraxia. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that a central semantic-conceptual disorder underlies the similar linguistic and gestural communication impairments in AD.

Deregulated semantic cognition contributes to object‐use deficits in Alzheimer's disease: A comparison with semantic aphasia and semantic dementia

“…Among these studies there is, nonetheless, general consensus that patients with AD frequently exhibit everyday action disorders which result at least in part from their disrupted semantic knowledge (Chainay, Louarn, & Humphreys, ; Dumont, Ska, & Joanette, ; Mack, Eberle, Frolich, & Knopf, ; Ochipa, Rothi, & Heilman, ). The multimodal nature of AD patients’ conceptual deficits suggests damage to a core component of semantic cognition (Dumont et al ., ; see also Glosser, Wiley, & Barnoski, ). A small number of AD patients, however, appear to show impaired object use in the context of relatively preserved verbal conceptual knowledge (Moreaud, Charnallet, & Pellat, ; Ochipa et al ., ).…”

Confirmation and lucidity during conversations with a woman with severe dementia

“…1997, Bickel et al . 2000) and use mimicry and gestures to show their feelings (Asplund et al . 1995, Glosser et al .…”

On the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease from multimodal signals: A survey

“…Language and communication disturbances suffered by AD patients include [276] word recall and word-finding difficulties Pitch, standard deviation of pitch, max and min pitch, intensity, standard deviation of intensity, max and min intensity, period mean, period standard deviation, and root mean square amplitude, shimmer, local jitter, noise-to-harmonics ratio, harmonics-to-noise ratio and autocorrelation, fraction of locally unvoiced frames, degree of voice breaks HFD Max, min, variance, SD [277][278][279][280], repetitions during speech [277][278][279]281], loss of both reading and writing skills [280], problems to follow a conversation due to deterioration in concentration and comprehension skills [279,280] and decline in non-verbal communication skills [282]. These problems are present from the very early stages of the disease, and progress and worsen at the same time that the cognitive decline [276,283].…”