Abstract: ObjectiveTo explore the characteristics of phonological encoding of Chinese disyllabic compound words in patients with mild cognition impairment(MCI). Methods10 patients with MCI and 10 normal controls who matched with the age, gender, level of education and handedness performed homophone judgment task. In this task, a picture with a disyllabic compound name was presented, after 100 ms of the presentation there would be a Chinese character below the picture. Subjects were asked to judge whether one of the morpheme in the picture name was homophonic to the character. The reaction time and error ratio were analyzed statistically. ResultsIn the normal controls, the reaction time for the second constituents was shorter than that for the first constituents, while there were no difference between the first and second constituents reaction time in MCI patients. The error ratio of the first and second constituents showed no difference in normal controls, but MCI patients made more error rate for the first constituents. ConclusionAs the heathy elderly,the MCI patients have same pattern in phonological coding of Chinese disyllabic compound words, but much slower in activation speed, indicating the impairment of semantic memory and phonological activation in patients with MCI.

Key words: mild cognitive impairment (MCI), phonological encoding, homophone judgment, semantic memory