Forming New Orthographic Representations in Alzheimer’s Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment

• María del Carmen Pérez-Sánchez ^[1] ; María González-Nosti ^[1] ; Elena Herrera ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad de Oviedo

     Universidad de Oviedo

     Oviedo, España

     
• Localización: Health, Aging & End of Life (HAEL): Revista Internacional de Investigación, ISSN-e 2462-5175, Vol. 7, Nº. 1, 2022, págs. 5-28
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • When we read the same word several times, we end up forming an orthographicrepresentation of it that allows us to read it in a fluid way. Several investigationswere aimed at how healthy people, children or dyslexic adults learn new words,but little is known on how this process works on patients with neurodegenerativediseases, for example Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment(MCI). Hence, the aim of this project was to analyze the formation of neworthographic representationsin these people. For that purpose, eight words of avery low frequency were selected, half of them short and half of them long, andwere presented six times to the participants, 4 of them in a narrative context. Thelearning process was measured accordingto the elimination of the length effectthat indicates the crossing from a sublexical reading to a lexical one. The resultsshowed the disappearance of the length effect in the control group, as well as a reduction in RTs in MCI participants and AD patients, without a disappearanceof length effect in these groups. All this indicates that learning was consolidatedin the control group, whereas in the MCI and the AD group it cannot be said thata new representation has formed