Abstract

ABSTRACT Background Language studies in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have been primarily focused on lexicosemantic abilities, with a paucity of data regarding syntactic processing. Aims We aimed to verify the sentence comprehension ability of older adults with amnestic MCI (aMCI), non-amnestic MCI (naMCI), and mild AD and compare it to the performance of cognitively healthy older adults. Methods & Procedures We evaluated 32 cognitively healthy older adults, 22 with aMCI, 43 with naMCI, and 12 with mild AD using the Test for Reception of Grammar Version 2 (TROG-2). Outcomes & Results There were significant differences between the control and MCI and control and AD groups in the total number of correct answers and among the four groups’ profiles according to the type of sentence (p < 0.05). Zero anaphor, pronoun gender/number, and centre-embedded sentences discriminated at least between two groups (p < 0.05). Conclusions Poorer performance in sentences structurally more complex was in line with the severity of the cognitive decline, which may point to the effect of increased demands on working memory and executive functions on syntactic processing.

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