Las pausas en el discurso de individuos con demencia tipo Alzheimer. Estudio de casos

Abstract

Pause is a prosodic parameter used in oral statements, and has been used in this research study to analyze the discourse of two Alzheimer's patients. This disorder does not only manifest clinically, but in communicative situations and discourses that can be observed through pauses, for example. Data for analysis were taken from a corpus of speech samples provided by Laboratorio de Neurociencias (Neuroscience Laboratory) at Universidad del Zulia (LUZ). For analysis, samples with voiced and unvoiced pauses were selected. Duration was the acoustic parameter mostly analyzed. Thus, pause in Alzheimer's discourse shows linguistic and cognitive deficits because discourses observed present more and longer pauses than normal subjects.