Perception of Communicative and Non-communicative Motion-Defined Gestures in Parkinson's Disease. (8th April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Jaywant, Abhishek; Wasserman, Victor; Kemppainen, Maaria; Neargarder, Sandy; Cronin-Golomb, Alice
• Is Part Of: Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society. Volume 22:Number 5(2016)
• Page Start: 540
• Page End: 550
• Publication Date: 2016-04-08
• Subjects: Neurodegenerative diseases, -- Gender, -- Interpersonal relations, -- Motor activity, -- Social behavior, -- Biological motion; Neuropsychology -- Periodicals; 616.8
• DOI: 10.1017/S1355617716000114
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1355-6177

Abstract

Abstract: Objectives: Parkinson's disease (PD) is associated with deficits in social cognition and visual perception, but little is known about how the disease affects perception of socially complex biological motion, specifically motion-defined communicative and non-communicative gestures. We predicted that individuals with PD would perform more poorly than normal control (NC) participants in discriminating between communicative and non-communicative gestures, and in describing communicative gestures. We related the results to the participants' gender, as there are gender differences in social cognition in PD.Methods: The study included 23 individuals with PD (10 men) and 24 NC participants (10 men) matched for age and education level. Participants viewed point-light human figures that conveyed communicative and non-communicative gestures and were asked to describe each gesture while discriminating between the two gesture types.Results: PD as a group were less accurate than NC in describing non-communicative but not communicative gestures. Men with PD were impaired in describing and discriminating between communicative as well as non-communicative gestures.Conclusions: The present study demonstrated PD-related impairments in perceiving and inferring the meaning of biological motion gestures. Men with PD may have particular difficulty in understanding the communicative gestures of others in interpersonal exchanges. ( JINS, 2016, 22, 1–11)