Features of answers to questions about recent events by people with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease, and healthy controls

Background: Asking patients who have been referred to memory clinics open questions about recent events has been shown to have diagnostic relevance.

Method: We use conversation analysis to look at responses to questions about recent events. The interviewees are healthy control (HC) participants, people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and people with Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Results: We show differences among the groups’ use of claims of memory problems, self-directed questions, and well-prefacing. Healthy control participants produce more talk in response to all of these, while people with MCI and AD either do not, or do so in demonstrably different ways from both HC participants and each other.

Discussion/conclusion: Healthy control participants are both willing and able to ‘show off’ their memory, while people with AD are willing but generally unable to do so. People with MCI, in contrast, display themselves as both unwilling and unable to engage with the agent’s questions as tests of memory.