Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

English

Committee Chair

Sage Graham

Committee Member

Leah Windsor

Committee Member

J. Elliott Casal

Abstract

The aim of this study is to understand what linguistic measures differ in individuals who have dementia versus a healthy control group as linguistic measures can provide insight to discrepancies in cognitive abilities, notably language. The problem with identifying and diagnosing diseases related to memory, such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, is that diagnoses require involved medical examinations, such as neuroimaging, and descriptive diagnostics that may be subjective and relative. This can lead to ambiguous results and lack of clarity for patients and their families and medical care team, making it difficult to chart a course of action or make decisions in the patient’s best interest. However, if we take a methodical, quantitative linguistic look at the language used in standard memory care diagnoses, we can generate objective parameters or baselines for rates of word usage that can provide more clarity for patients and their families and medical care teams. By using language categories and baseline rates of usage of terms like articles, prepositions, and dysfluencies in control populations versus those individuals with definitive mild and moderate memory care diagnoses, we can provide clinicians and practitioners with guidelines for making more objective diagnoses. Alongside other diagnostic processes, linguistic analysis will help the medical care team better inform patients and their families so they can make better choices and decisions about the level of care and interventions they need. In this study we analyze the lexical categories of patients diagnosed with mild and moderate Alzheimer’s/dementia (hereafter AD) alongside a control group to uncover patterns of language usage. We use a computational, corpus-based approach to gauge which psycholinguistic categories and subcategories and linguistic features are reflected in the speech of patients with mild and moderate dementia, with the help of the LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) software.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest.

Notes

Open Access

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