Word-stem completion task to investigate semantic network in patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Full Abstract

Semantic impairment in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) is revealed by tasks of verbal naming, verbal fluency, and semantic knowledge. Causes of the deficit remain unclear in spite of many studies to investigate whether AD patients suffer from the inability to have voluntary access to an almost intact semantic store or from its break down. Word-stem completion (WSC) tasks have been utilized in healthy subjects in order to study semantic memory and network by exploiting the possibility of the involuntary access to them. Available conflicting data refer to the presence of semantic prime in AD patients. To explore the semantic network in AD, patients were requested to complete with the first word that sprang to their mind a stem submitted immediately after presentation of the word prime, as a WSC task. Stems consisted of the three beginning letters of words that were semantically related to primes. We compared data obtained with this task from patients with mild to moderate AD with those from normal controls (NC). AD patients completed less stems (P<0.001) with the expected words than NC, suggesting a break down of the semantic network rather than a deficit in the access to the semantic store.

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Author information

Author/s: Passafiume, D (D); Di Giacomo, D (D); Carolei, A (A);

Affiliation: Unità di Neuropsicologia Clinica e Comportamentale, Clinica Neurologica, Dipartimento di Medicina Interna e Sanità Pubblica, Università degli Studi di l'Aquila, Coppito, Italy. passafiume(-atsign-)cc.univaq.it

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: European journal of neurology : the official journal of the European Federation of Neurological Societies (Eur J Neurol), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-May; vol 13 (issue 5) : pp 460-4

Dates: Created 2006/05/25; Completed 2006/08/11;

PMID: 16722969, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Aged
Alzheimer Disease - physiopathology; psychology
Educational Status
Female
Humans

Italy
Language
Male
Semantics
Speech

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