Characteristics of language performance in four groups of patients attending a memory clinic

The article compares the performance on language assessment of four matched groups of patients attending a memory clinic. Patients with a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia showed deficits on all assessments, but there were differences between the groups relating to reading comprehension, writing to dictation and word fluency. Although the worried well and depressed groups did not present with obvious language deficits, there was wide variation of performance within each group, highlighting the heterogeneity of the groups. Group scores of the worried well and depressed groups compare favourably to available published figures for normal performance. The implications of these findings and the potential role of language assessment in the differential diagnosis of the cause of memory problems are discussed.