Session Information
Date: Monday, September 23, 2019
Session Title: Other
Session Time: 1:45pm-3:15pm
Location: Agora 2 West, Level 2
Objective: To characterize picture description by patients with PD Hebrew speakers.
Background: Non-motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease (PD) such as cognitive decline, depression and language deficits influence communication abilities of people with Parkinson and thus worsen their quality of life. Language disorders of patient were studied in many languages across the globe but not in Hebrew.
Method: 11 PD patients and 11 healthy control (HC) were asked to describe the “cookie theft” picture from the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE). All participants underwent the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). In addition, the PD patients underwent the Parkinson’s disease quality of life questionnaire (PDQ8). Content information of picture description was manually analyzed.
Results: PD patients mean Hoehn & Yahr 2.68±0.75; disease duration 13.64±7.56; and PDQ-8 9.81±6.3. Mean age of PD/HC 63.09±6.9/60.09±3.44 respectively. MoCA mean scores of PD/HC 22.18±5.41/27.27±2.19 respectively. Total score of picture description units was significantly higher for HC vs PD subjects 14.27±1.95/10.36±3.8 )p<0.05(. In addition, HC regarded to more objects than PD patients significantly 6.0±0.77/4.18±1.66 (p<0.05) such as sink 100%/45% (p<0.05). The PD patients related to the action washing dishes significantly different than HC. While PD patients related significantly more to the object plate 64%/9% (p<0.05) HC related significantly more to the object dishes 82%/27% (p<0.05). Correlation between content of picture description and MoCA was not found.
Conclusion: PD patients demonstrated decreased language abilities in picture description task in comparison to HC participants, which was not explained by cognitive decline. The “cookie theft” picture may be used for language evaluation for patients with PD. Further studies of language characteristics in Hebrew in PD should be conducted and language evaluation should be a part of the assessment in order to adjust the proper language treatment for the improvement of communication skills of the patients.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
D. Shpunt, S. Naor, N. Diamant, A. Faust-Socher, H. Shabtai, R. Peled, A. Migirov, T. Gurevich, Y. Manor. Language characteristics of picture description task by Hebrew speaking patients with Parkinson’s disease [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2019; 34 (suppl 2). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/language-characteristics-of-picture-description-task-by-hebrew-speaking-patients-with-parkinsons-disease/. Accessed May 15, 2025.« Back to 2019 International Congress
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/language-characteristics-of-picture-description-task-by-hebrew-speaking-patients-with-parkinsons-disease/