[Psycholinguistic analysis of the speech of senile dementia patients].

The author has studied 17 patients with senile dementia and its combination (in case of an underlying atrophic process) with cerebral atherosclerosis but without local pathomorphological changes. It has been found that in senile dementia the multilevel and multiaspect functional system of speech is impaired at both, a lower, phonetic, and higher speech (a phonological analysis) levels. Other findings with regard to the speech level include disturbances of programming a speech statement or internal speech (dynamic aphasia), impairment of grammatical structuring and damaged lexical choice. The above disturbances (above all programming of the internal speech) are linked with intellectual deviations and are secondary to atrophy of the frontal lobes.