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KMID : 0921420090140040514
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Korean Journal of Communication Disorders
2009 Volume.14 No. 4 p.514 ~ p.530
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The Functional Characteristics of Fillers in the Utterances of Dementia of Alzheimer’s Type, Questionable Dementia, and Normal Elders
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Ha Ji-Wan
Sim Hyun-Sub
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Abstract
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Background & Objectives: We compared and analyzed the fillers in the utterances of questionable dementia, mild and moderate Dementia of Alzheimer’s Type (DAT), and normal elders to investigate the function of fillers in relation to the utterance length, lexical retrieval, and cognitive demand.
Methods: The total ratios of the filler were compared among groups. For utterance length, we compared the ratios of the filler between short utterances and long utterances within each group and the ratios of the filler of each utterance among groups. We also compared the ratios of ‘filler + substitute’ and the ratios of the filler of each task among groups in relation with lexical retrieval and cognitive demand, respectively.
Results: None of the groups differed in their overall filler quantity. Long utterances had significantly more fillers than short utterances in all groups, and the ratios of the filler of each utterance were not significantly different among groups. However, the ratios of the substitute following the filler were significantly different between mild DAT patients and normal elders and between moderate DAT patients and normal elders or elders with questionable dementia. Also, the ratios of the filler in the explanatory task were significantly different between moderate DAT patients and normal elders.
Discussion & Conclusion: The findings suggest that we can obtain valuable information on a speaker’s linguistic and cognitive difficulties by examining the functional characteristics of the fillers in spontaneous speech
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KEYWORD
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Dementia of Alzheimer’s Type (DAT), filler, utterance length, lexical retrieval, cognitive demand
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