The Comparison of Descriptive Discourse among Elderlies with Alzheimer's Disease and Healthy Elderlies of Tehran

Discourse disorders of elderly people with Alzheimer’s disease affect their ability to communicate and participate in social interaction. This research compares descriptive discourse among elderlies with Alzheimer’s disease and healthy elderlies.
The method applied in the present study is ex post facto. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease and the healthy elderlies of Tehran made the research population. To control the effective variables, 20 patients were matched with 22 healthy elderlies on the basis of age, education, gender, and being monolingual or bilingual. Different assessments were done for discourse analysis. U Man Whitney Test was used to analyze the data.
Patients with Alzheimer’s disease, performed weaker than the healthy aged control group in four measures that derived from discourse, which consist of false concepts (p=0.001), endless utterances (P>0.001), false conjunctions (P=0.007), and true conjunctions (P=0.031).
Results indicate that discourse of elderlies with Alzheimer’s disease was impaired in structure and content. Increase of False concepts, endless utterances, and false conjunctions, with decline of true conjunctions result in clinical discourse disorder in Alzheimer’s disease.