The use of phonemic cueing with Alzheimer's disease patients.

Variables influencing responsiveness to phonemic cueing, although studied extensively in the aphasia population, have not been identified in the Alzheimer's disease population. In this study, four variables were analyzed in relation to successfulness of phonemic cueing: severity of dementia, confrontational naming ability, auditory comprehension, and speech fluency. All three language measures showed a significant positive correlation with cueing. Severity of dementia showed a significant inverse correlation with responsiveness to cueing and was the best predictor of successful use of cueing. It was concluded that phonemic cueing aided in label retrieval, problematic in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, prior to significant erosion of semantic meaning.