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Speech monitoring skills in Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and normal aging
McNamara P, Obler LK, Au R, Durso R, Albert ML.. Brain and language, 1992-01-01
Topic: Amyloid, tau and blood-test diagnosis
We examined the abilities of 15 patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), 22 patients with Parkinson's Disease (PD), and 141 healthy subjects (ranging in age from 30 to 79 years) to detect and correct their own speech errors. Each subject was shown the Cookie Theft picture of the BDAE (Goodglass & Kaplan, 1972. The assessment of aphasia and related disorders. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger.) and instructed to tell the examiner the "...story of what's happening in the picture." Self-monitoring performance was assessed by tabulating the number of uncorrected errors as well as repaired errors. We divided repairs into two types based on the psycholinguistics literature (van Wijk & Kempen, 1987. Cognitive Psychology, 19, 403-440). Speech corrections were judged to be lemma repairs when the reparandum was a single word, and reformulation repairs when a new syntactic constituent was added to the reparandum. Patients with DAT corrected only 24% of their total errors and patients with PD only 25%. Healthy subjects, by contrast, corrected from 72 to 92% of their total errors. Patients with DAT tended to rely on reformulation repairs while patients with PD used both repair types about equally often. While healthy elderly Ss (in the 70s group) utilized lemma repairs more often than the reformulation strategy, all other healthy Ss used both strategies about equally often. Across all groups naming performance correlated negatively with numbers of undetected errors. Results point to a previously unrecognized communication disorder associated with PD and DAT and manifested by an impairment in the ability to correct output errors. This impairment may be related to attentional and frontal dysfunction in the two patient groups.
Key findings
- Results point to a previously unrecognized communication disorder associated with PD and DAT and manifested by an impairment in the ability to correct output errors.
Why it matters
Patients with Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease corrected far fewer of their own speech errors than healthy subjects, pointing to a communication problem not previously recognized. No treatment, cure, or prevention is reported.
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Study details
- Participants15
- Evidence strengthLow
How this study scored 40/100
Published in a peer-reviewed journal. Scored zero for study design, effect reported and randomised / blinded because the record does not state it.
| Component | Points | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Journal tier | 7 / 10 | Tier 3 — peer-reviewed journal (Brain and language) |
| Journal's citation record | 2 / 4 | Brain and Language: journal h-index 214 (OpenAlex, 2026-10-29) |
| Study design | 0 / 12 | No study design recorded — scores zero, not guessed (not stated in the record — scored 0) |
| Strength of evidence | 1 / 5 | Rated “low” in our summary |
| Peer-review validation | 10 / 10 | Peer-reviewed. Published as an article in a named peer-reviewed journal. |
| How recent | 1 / 5 | 1992 — older than 20 years, still counted |
| Sample size | 1 / 4 | 15 participants |
| Effect reported | 0 / 3 | No effect size reported — scores zero (not stated in the record — scored 0) |
| Studied in people | 3 / 3 | Studied in people (participant count stated) |
| Randomised / blinded | 0 / 2 | No randomisation or blinding stated — scores zero (not stated in the record — scored 0) |
| Times cited | 4 / 7 | Cited 94 times (OpenAlex, 2026-10-10) |
| Citations per year | 1 / 5 | 2.6 citations a year over 36 year(s) since 1992 |
| Impact for its field and year | 1 / 6 | Cited 0.8× the average for papers of its field and year (OpenAlex FWCI) |
| Cited by studies here | 1 / 6 | Cited by 2 other studies in this library |
| Still being cited | 1 / 4 | Cited 6 times in 2024–2026 (2026 still in progress; OpenAlex) |
| Senior author's track record | 3 / 4 | Last-listed author Martin L. Albert: h-index 51 (OpenAlex, whole career) |
| Institution's track record | 1 / 3 | Boston University: institution h-index 1,456 (OpenAlex) |
| Multi-centre collaboration | 1 / 3 | OpenAlex lists 2 institution(s) in 1 country |
| Indexed in PubMed | 2 / 2 | Indexed in PubMed (PMID 1547468) |
| Free to read | 0 / 2 | Behind a paywall — scores zero |
| Total | 40 / 100 | — |
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Read the original
- DOI: 10.1016/0093-934x(92)90055-j
- PubMed: 1547468
- Original source →
- Free full text: Brain and Language →
Full text: free to read — OpenAlex lists this copy as free to read: the link above (checked 6 Feb 1020).
Cite this study APA, Vancouver, BibTeX · download .bib or .ris
Built from the record alzhub holds for this paper, not looked up. Volume, issue and page numbers are not held in the record. Check the citation against the original before you use it.
APA 7th
McNamara, P., Obler, L. K., Au, R., Durso, R., & Albert, M. L. (1992). Speech monitoring skills in Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and normal aging. Brain and language. https://doi.org/10.1016/0093-934x(92)90055-j
Vancouver
McNamara P, Obler LK, Au R, Durso R, Albert ML. Speech monitoring skills in Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and normal aging. Brain and language. 1992. doi:10.1016/0093-934x(92)90055-j. PMID: 1547468.
BibTeX
@article{mcnamara1992-1547468,
author = {McNamara, P. and Obler, L. K. and Au, R. and Durso, R. and Albert, M. L.},
title = {{Speech monitoring skills in Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and normal aging}},
journal = {Brain and language},
year = {1992},
doi = {10.1016/0093-934x(92)90055-j},
pmid = {1547468},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/0093-934x(92)90055-j}
}
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