Repeting Non-Canonical Linguistic Constructions in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI): An Experimental Investigation

Abstract

Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is considered an intermediate stage between normal cognitive aging and mild dementia. The National Institute of Aging and Alzheimer’s Association Workgroup has recognized MCI as a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other types of dementia.Fewer studies have analysed language production in MCI subjects. We explore this topic by examining the performance of participants with MCI on non-canonicalstructures which are known to be problematic in more advanced types of dementia.Although we expected an overall decrement in performance, we predicted that complex non-canonical structures with syntactic movement would be harder to be recalled verbatim and would induce sentence reformulations in patients with MCI than in aged matched controls.These predictions were confirmed.