Document Type : Original Articles
Authors
- Masumeh Afshani 1
- Majid Soltani 1, 2
- Shahram Rafie 3
- Maryam Dastoorpour 4
- Davood Kashipazha 3
- Negin Moradi 5
1 Rehabilitation Research Center, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran.
2 Associate Professor, Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran.
3 Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran.
4 Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, School of Health, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran.
5 Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Wisconsin-River Falls, USA.
Abstract
Introduction: In addition to motor speech disorder, Parkinson's disease (PD) patients experience language problems. Given the importance of language in human communication and quality of life, this study aimed to examine high-level language skills in Persian-speaking Parkinson's patients.
Method: Fourteen PD patients with normal cognitive status and fourteen healthy subjects matched for age, gender, and education level were administered the high-level language test. This test included 'repetition of long sentences', 'recreating sentences', 'making inferences', 'comprehension of logico-grammatical sentences', 'comprehension of lexical and syntactical ambiguities', 'comprehension of metaphors', and 'word definitions'.
Result: Our results indicated that the mean scores of PD patients were consistently lower than the healthy group. The performance of the two groups in the subtests 'repetition of long sentences', 'recreating sentences', and 'making inferences' and the total level of the test was significantly different(P-Value≤0.005).
Conclusion: The current study indicated that high-level language skills are impaired in PD patients. These findings can help speech and language pathologists identify the linguistic problems of these patients and design a precise treatment plan to address the undesirable effects of these linguistic disorders.
Keywords
)