Monitoring of general knowledge: evidence for preservation in early Alzheimer's disease.
The ability to retrieve and monitor factual information was examined in normal old adults and patients with a mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). Subjects were given free recall and multiple-choice recognition tests of 48 general knowledge questions. For both tests, subjects made confidence ratings regarding the certainty of their answers, and they also made feeling-of-knowing ratings for those questions they did not answer in recall. Results indicated a superiority of controls over patients in recall that was somewhat reduced in recognition. However, there were no group differences in any of the slopes relating rating to accuracy: recall and recognition as a function of confidence rating, and recognition of questions not answered in recall as a function of feeling-of-knowing. This pattern of outcome indicates that early AD is associated with a deficit in fact-retrieval, although the ability to monitor stored general knowledge may be intact.
Section of Psychology, Stockholm Gerontology Research Center, Sweden.
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Bäckman
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Lipinska
D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D013997:Time Factors