Category-Specific Impairment of Patients with Dementia of Alzheimer’s Type in Category Fluency Tasks

Choi, Hyunjoo

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2010;15(4): 572-580.

Hyunjoo Choi^`

최현주(Hyunjoo Choi)

ABSTRACT

Background & Objectives
A category-specific impairment in naming tasks has been reported in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Since picture naming tests are frequently affected by methodological problems, the present study used category fluency tasks to investigate performance differences between living and non-living objects in patients with dementia of Alzheimer’s type (DAT).
Methods
Fifteen patients with DAT and fifteen healthy elderly adults participated in the present study. The category fluency tasks included four semantic categories, two living domains (animals and fruits) and two non-living domains (vehicles and clothing).
Results
The performance of the control group was better than the DAT group in all categories. However, the control group’s performance was higher in the living categories than in the non-living, while the DAT group showed no significant differences between the two domains. Additionally, in the performance of the DAT group, the number of errors was greater in the living categories than in the non-living.
Discussion & Conclusion
The results of the present study suggest that patients with DAT have some selective impairment in their knowledge of living objects.