Discourse intervention strategies in Alzheimer's disease: Eye-tracking and the effect of visual cues in conversation

OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to investigate whether on-topic visual cues can serve as aids for the maintenance of discourse coherence and informativeness in autobiographical narratives of persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD). METHODS: The experiment consisted of three randomized conversation conditions: one without prompts, showing a blank computer screen; an on-topic condition, showing a picture and a sentence about the conversation; and an off-topic condition, showing a picture and a sentence which were unrelated to the conversation. Speech was recorded while visual attention was examined using eye tracking to measure how long participants looked at cues and the face of the listener. RESULTS: Results suggest that interventions using visual cues in the form of images and written information are useful to improve discourse informativeness in AD. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated the potential of using images and short written messages as means of compensating for the cognitive deficits which underlie uninformative discourse in AD. Future studies should further investigate the efficacy of language interventions based in the use of these compensation strategies for AD patients and their family members and friends.