UC Berkeley

Pronoun usage can be a powerful way of studying individuals and their relationships with others. While much of this research has examined the use of pronouns in healthy populations, few studies have focused on more vulnerable populations like persons with dementia (PWDs) and their spousal caregivers. Dementia is a debilitating disease that can affect the socio-emotional functioning of the individuals afflicted as well as their spousal caregivers. Depending on the neural circuits of the brain impacted, PWDs can develop different patterns of impairment in cognitive, language, and socio-emotional domains. In the present study, objective measures were used to examine diagnostic differences in pronoun usage in PWDs and their spousal caregivers and the associations between pronoun usage and caregiver mental health. The sample was composed of 311 dyads (254 PWD-caregiver dyads and 57 healthy aged controls). The first aim examined diagnostic differences in the types of pronouns used and found an interaction effect between diagnostic group (behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia; bvFTD), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and healthy controls) and partner type (PWD, caregiver, healthy partner) in that PWDs with bvFTD used significantly more I-words than all other groups while caregivers of bvFTD patients used significantly fewer I-words than all other groups. Additionally, PWDs with bvFTD used significantly fewer you-words than all other groups while caregivers of bvFTD patients used significantly more you-words than all other groups. A marginally significant interaction effect for we-words was found with PWDs with AD using the most we-words and PWDs with bvFTD using the fewest we-words. The second aim addressed in this study examined whether the types of pronouns used by PWDs and their spousal caregivers were associated with caregiver mental health at the time of caregiving. No significant association with caregiver mental health at the time of caregiving were found for any of the three pronoun types used by PWDs and caregivers. The third aim examined the association between types of pronouns used by PWDs and their spousal caregivers and caregiver mental health post-death. Hypotheses related to the third aim were not supported. This study extends our understanding of the socio-emotional impact of neurodegenerative disease on PWDs and their spousal caregivers and contributes important new information to the literature on diagnostic differences in interpersonal functioning.