Oral and written picture descriptions were compared in 22 patients with Alzheimer's disease
(AD) and 24 healthy elderly subjects. AD patients had a significant reduction of all word
categories, which, similarly to controls, was more pronounced in written than in oral texts.
They also reported fewer information units than controls, but without task difference. At the
syntactic level, written descriptions of AD subjects were characterized by a diminution of
subordinate clauses and a reduction of functors. More grammatical errors were present in …