1. Do as I Do, Not as I Say; Relations Between Narrative Script Production
and Everyday Action
Benjamin L. Deck, Ashley Hagerty, Emily Roll, Tania Giovannetti,
Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
Introduction
Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is a syndrome characterized by subtle cognitive decline and typically precedes dementia, therefore it is paramount to accurately identify at-risk individuals
Activities of daily living are disrupted in older adults with MCI and may predict future cognitive decline.
Subtle action errors (micro-errors) on performance-based tests, such as the Naturalistic Action Task (NAT) occur in increased frequency in older adults with cognitive impairment.
Given the evolutionary overlap between motor and language systems, true subtle action errors (e.g., micro-errors) may be associated with subtle language errors. If so, subtle language errors may be useful for assessing mild functional difficulties
Hypotheses
Subtle speech dis-fluencies are related to subtle action errors (i.e., micro-errors) in older adults with MCI.
Speech and action errors will share similar cognitive correlates.
Methods
- Participants
28 individuals with MCI (M age=73.1; M education = 11.7) were recruited from an outpatient neuropsychology service in Philadelphia.
- Everyday Action Performance
Participants enacted the lunch task (action) which entailed packing a lunchbox with items in a drawer while avoiding potentially salient distractor objects. Performance was scored for overt errors (e.g., step omission, sequence errors, etc.) and micro-errors (e.g., action – object moved but not used; see Table 1).
- Script Generation Task (SGT)
Participants were asked to describe all steps required to pack a lunch with a sandwich, snack and a drink (script). Errors and pause or filler words -“uh” or “um” were coded from audio recordings (See Table 2).
Table 4: M Total Errors on Script and NAT Tasks
Table 5: Script x NAT Errors
Spearman’s Correlations r (p)
Table 1: NAT Micro-error Codes
Script Overt Errors
Speech Dis-fluencies
NAT Overt Errors
NAT Micro-errors -
0.21 (0.28)
0.18 (0.36)
(.94)
0.30 (0.12)
(.84)
(.10)
Script and NAT Errors X Neuropsychological Tests
Script micro-errors correlated with measures of verbal fluency (FAS r=-0.43, p=.03)
Action micro-errors correlated with measures of episodic memory (P[r]VLT immediate recall r=-0.45, p=.02).
Table 2: Script Generation Error Codes * *
Summary
Micro-errors in everyday action were not significantly associated with subtle disfluencies in script production in an MCI population.
Script and action errors were correlated with different cognitive measures that do not meaningfully overlap with subtle errors in everyday action and dis-fluencies in speech production.
Conclusions
Based on our population and methodology, language-based errors may not be used as a proxy for understanding everyday action in older adults
Further research is needed to understand relations between motor and speech process
Acknowledgements
Diamond Research Scholars Program, Dr. Ibionu Lawrence
Neuropsychological Measures
Participants also completed:
MMSE (cognitive impairment)
P[r]VLT (episodic memory)
WRAT-4 (general comprehension)
FAS (verbal fluency)
Digits Backwards (working memory)
Results
Table 3: Demographic and Clinical
Characteristics of the Sample