Aging and Alzheimer's Disease - Influence of connectives and clauses on comprehension and memory

The goal of this study is to examine the impact of various connectives such as causal, adversative, additive on sentence comprehension and memory for young, elderly and for subjects suffering from Alzheimer's disease (AD). Th e three groups (N = 48) read pairs of clauses linked or not by a connective at their own rhythm and they performed different tests: verb recognition, comprehension and inferential questions and completion. Results show that w hatever the type of connective, its presence has few effects on young and e lderly performances. We note an increase of connectives reading times for A D subjects, suggesting that the presence of connectives seems to be a cue f or interclausal integration. Moreover, the treatment of the adversative is more difficult for them than the treatment of causal and additive.