Narrating the Cinderella story in adults with primary progressive aphasia

Abstract

The language of adults with non-Alzheimer’s dementias is still relatively unexplored. This is problematic given that, in the absence of definitive biomarkers, linguistic features have an important role to play in the diagnosis of these dementias. In this article, the performance of adults with primary progressive aphasia during narration of the Cinderella story is examined. The adults were all participants in an investigation of primary progressive aphasia conducted by researchers in the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Narration of the Cinderella story is a high-level language task which permits a detailed examination of cognitive-linguistic skills to be undertaken. This examination reveals that the narrative impairments of adults with primary progressive aphasia cannot be entirely explained by the structural language deficits of these adults. The sensitivity of the Cinderella story to cognitive-linguistic impairments in primary progressive aphasia warrants the use of this narrative task in the diagnostic evaluation of adults with this form of dementia.