경도인지장애에서 문장 내 핵심 단어 위치에 따른 말소리 지각

Abstract

Objectives : As speech perception is the initial stage of auditory language comprehension, a listener's auditory, as well as cognitive functions (e.g., memory), contribute to speech perception. The aim of the present study was to explore the effect of keyword position on sentence recognition under background noise in mild cognitive impairment.

Methods : We studied 14 elderly individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) as an experimental group and 14 elderly individuals with normal cognitive function as a control group. The tasks included immediate and delayed recall tests and sentence recognition tests.

Results : We found that the aMCI group scored significantly lower than the normal elderly on both the immediate and delayed recall tests. Also, significant differences in word recognition scores were found only on the first keyword, not on the last.

Conclusion ; These results reflect the diminished primacy effect of serial position in aMCI. Also, aMCI with re-duced working memory capacity may selectively store the more recently processed words and pay more attention to predicates which are regarded as major components in Korean sentence comprehension. Our findings suggest that repeating core messages or putting the keyword at the end of a sentence could be useful strategies to ensure elderly with cognitive impairment overcome speech perception and auditory comprehension difficulties they may have.