Access to context-specific lexical-semantic information during discourse tasks differentiates speakers with latent aphasia, mild cognitive impairment, and cognitively healthy adults

Our study suggests that the Cinderella story is more sensitive than a picture description task for demonstrating the subtle lexical-semantic changes in MCI and latent aphasia compared to CHAs. Core lexicon appears to be a sensitive discourse metric to identify linguistic differences between CHAs and individuals with mild cognitive and/or language deficits. These findings further support calls to provide speech/language and cognitive therapy to individuals with MCI and/or latent aphasia.