Abstract
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is considered a prodromal stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the prevalence of which increases as the society is ageing. Within the Nun Study, it was found that idea density in youth is related to cognitive performance in old age.
Idea density means how content-full the speech is, i.e. number of propositions per ten words. During progress of AD, at first the new episodic memories are impaired, rather then well-established old memories.
This project is aimed to find a difference in idea density in speech, on two topics: 1. childhood and youth, 2. last weekend and present life. Two groups will be included and compared: healthy older persons and persons with MCI.
Their speech will be transcribed and linguistically analyzed. The outcomes will enrich theory in relation to linguistic phenomena in normal and pathological aging.
For clinical practice, it may be potentially interesting to know whether it possible to distinguish MCI during an interview.