Browsing by Author "Pystynen, Johanna"

There has been little research on writing impairment due to memory illness compared to how common memory illnesses are. For instance, extremely few studies on writing impairment due to Alzheimer's disease have been conducted in Finnish. The effects of AD can often first be noticed in semantic and pragmantic skills. Writing impairments emerge in the early stage of AD, and writing problems can be perceived as early signs of AD. The aim of this research was to study, what kind of changes emerge in the use of verb processes of a person with AD. Previous studies have shown that persons with AD have difficulties processing semantic roles related to verbs due to impairment of semantic memory. In AD the difficulty of generating verbs is not related to syntactic structures of verbs. Research material consisted of diary texts written by a woman with AD. She was born in 1932. Familiziaring with the research material, transcribing and narrowing of the research material was a collaboration between three students writing their Master's Thesis and a University Lecturer. The final research material consisted of texts written in June of 1986, 1996, 2001, 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012. The verbs were categorized as belonging to Halliday's (2004) five primary process types and then the process types' percentages within the inspection points were calculated. As a result it was noted that the use of verb processes changes in AD. Especially the proportions of the three main process types levelled slightly during the last years of writing: the percentage of material processes declined, the percentage of relational processes remained relatively unchanged and the percentage of mental processes increased. The writer used verbal processes seldom throughout the years, and finally they vanished altogether. Levelling of percentages can be a sign of a fading recount ability in AD when the understanding of complex language and the awareness of incidents that recently happened to self or other incidents weakens as the disease proceeds. This research provides new logopedic information when it comes to impairment of spontaneous writing. It also provides a new perspective for applying SFL in the research of linguistic skills. Research of changes in writing abilities may sometime in the future supply a diagnostic tool in healthcare.