My Recaller is on Vacation: Discourse Analysis of Nursing-Home Residents With Dementia

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess discourse profiles of nursing-home residents in the early, middle, and late stages of dementia. Sixty transcripts of conversations between nursing-home residents with dementia and their nursing aides were analyzed with a discourse analysis schema. The results suggest that discourse level and utterance level characteristics in conversations were affected by the stage of dementia in different ways. Utterance level characteristics, such as local coherence and cohesion, were more impaired in the late stages of dementia compared to early stages. Discourse level characteristics, such as global coherence and elaborations on a topic, were more impaired in the middle and late stages of dementia compared to early stages. Nursing aides do not seem to make attempts to compensate for memory deficits of dementia residents in their conversation where they would need to do that most: providing cues and repetitions for late-stage dementia patients.