Browsing by Author "Marques, Pirita"

Goals. Event schema or a script is a knowledge structure that describes appropriate sequences of events in a particular context. Script contains components which are vertically and horizontally connected to each other. A person may learn about scripts by personal experience, reading about them, hearing about them and seeing them done. Therefore, scripts contain information from episodic and semantic memory. Script research provides information about memory functions and the representation and the damage of the systems in different diseases affecting the neural systems, such as in Alzheimer's disease (AD). With increasing theoretical knowledge it is possible to develop differential diagnostic and rehabilitation methods for the patients in clinical work. The purpose of the study is to examine the script production of two different scripts in the mild and moderate stage of AD. Methods. The material of AD patients was gathered in 1994-1997 at the Department of Neurology (Memory Clinic) of the Helsinki University Central Hospital. The normal control subjects were from the pool of participants of the Helsinki Aging Brain Study which started in 1989. Ten people with mild AD (LiAT), ten with moderate AD (KoAT) and ten matched normal controls (NoI) were asked to produce as many script events as possible for two scripts: What do you do between waking up and having lunch? (The Morning script) representing episodic memory and What happens at a doctor's appointment? (The Doctor script) representing semantic memory. Sixty seconds were allotted for each script. The scripts were scored for the total number of events, the number of event repetitions, the informativeness of the contents and the plausibility and the centrality of the events. Statistical methods used were the Kruskal-Wallis one way variance analysis and the Mann-Whitney U –test post hoc –test. Results and conclusions. The results showed that the number of events for the both script types was statistically significantly lower for the people with AD compared to the control group. In addition, the ratio of informativeness was statistically significantly poorer for the people with AD. Depending on the script type, people with AD produced less plausible and central events than the control group. The results of the study are consistent in many aspects with the literature and the studies of AD suggesting that episodic memory is first impaired in AD, followed by the impairment of semantic memory.