Semantic priming impairment in HIV.
HIV+ subjects have shown impairment on tests of executive function including automatic attention and verbal tasks. Impairment of semantic priming in HIV patients would suggest a disruption of automatic semantic activation. We examined semantic priming in HIV+ individuals and HIV- control participants with no history of substance abuse, neurologic or psychiatric disorder unrelated to HIV. HIV+ participants were divided into cognitively normal and cognitively impaired subgroups on the basis of a neuropsychological battery of 15 tests. Participants were presented with English words and nonword letter strings and indicated if the stimulus was a word or nonword. The nonwords were orthographically and phonologically correct and were created by rearranging the letter sequence of words ("ulpit"). All words had an obvious antonym ("deep"); two-thirds were presented as sequential antonym pairs ("enter"-"exit"). There were no group differences in speed of response to nonwords, indicating no generalized reaction time deficit. While control and cognitively normal HIV+ participants showed an effect of priming on reaction time to correctly detected words, cognitively impaired HIV+ participants did not. The lack of semantic priming demonstrated by cognitively impaired HIV+ participants suggests that they have lessened activation of automatic semantic networks.
Nielsen-Bohlman
L
L
Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, USA.
Boyle
D
D
Biggins
C
C
Ezekiel
F
F
Fein
G
G
D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000523:psychology*; D015497:HIV-1; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012660:Semantics