The uses of nouns and deixis in discourse production in Alzheimer's disease

Deixis is a linguistic tool derived from the Greek word for ‘pointing’ that handles reference in relation to the immediate communicative context. This study investigated the uses of deictic (spatial vs. person) and nouns, using multiple discourse tasks in 26 dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) patients and 26 demographically matched healthy elderly. The chief research findings were: (1) the effects of the DAT process differed across the spatial vs. person deictic forms and (2) the discourse task under study, hence the communicative context, determined the nature and degree of group differences as well as the relationship between discourse variables.