Aging and Alzheimer's Disease - Influence of connectives and clauses on comprehension and memory

The goal of this study is to examine the impact of various connectives such as causal, adversative, additive on sentence comprehension and memory for young, elderly and for subjects suffering from Alzheimer's disease (AD). The three groups (N = 48) read pairs of clauses linked or not by a connective at their own rhythm and they performed different tests: verb recognition, comprehension and inferential questions and completion. Results show that whatever the type of connective, its presence has few effects on young and elderly performances. We note an increase of connectives reading times for AD subjects, suggesting that the presence of connectives seems to be a cue for interclausal integration. Moreover, the treatment of the adversative is more difficult for them than the treatment of causal and additive.