Comparison of language and narrative features of individuals among amnestic mild cognitive impairment and healthy adults

Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is a stage between healthy aging and dementia. Changes in language function (e.g., connected speech, naming ability) that may further inform both diagnostic and intervention approaches to identifying and treating people at risk of or suspected of having dementia of the Alzheimer’s type. Therefore, it is important to assess the speech and language skills of individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). This is a preliminary study to determine the language and narrative skills of Turkish individuals with those of aMCI and compare their results with those of cognitively healthy participants. We examined language and narration skills in a sample of 30 adults with aMCI and 30 cognitively healthy individuals who were recruited from the hospital setting. For this purpose, Test Your Memory–Turkish Version (TYM-TR), the Turkish Picture Naming Test (T-RAT), the Aphasia Language Assessment Test (ADD) Repetition Subtest, and the Turkish Nonword Repetition Test (TAST) were administered. The Pyramid and Palm Trees Test (PPTT) and the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN-TR) Dog Story Retelling tasks were also administered. As a result of our study, it was determined that non-word repetition, story grammar, and narrative comprehension scores were significantly different between the groups. No significant difference was found in the other parameters investigated in the study. This study is one the first on the language and narrative skills of participants with aMCI in Turkish.