Authors:

Patterson, K., Graham, N. & Hodges, J.

Reference:

Year of publication:

1994

CBU number:

3176

Abstract:

The authors assessed 45 patients with a probable diagnosis of dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), varying from minimal to moderate levels of dementia on 3 tasks of reading aloud: (a) an extensive list of regular and exception words across a range of word frequencies, (b) the National Adult Reading Test (NART), and (c) a test of nonword reading. On the first test, the patients showed substantial effects of regularity, word frequency, and disease severity. Reading of less common words with atypical spelling-sound correspondences was significantly impaired in the moderately demented subgroup of patients and significantly correlated with measures of semantic memory for the patient group as a whole. This impaired exception word reading was attributed to the breakdown in semantic memory that occurs as the DAT disease process advances. A significant drop in performance on both the NART and nonword reading also accompanied increasing disease severity.