The scripting of activities of daily living in normal aging: anticipation and shifting deficits with preservation of sequencing.
The purpose of this study was to elaborate upon Shallice's frontal lobe model by evaluating 20 elderly normal and 20 young adult controls, all women, with cognitive tests, a paper-pencil script generation task and a kitchenette meal preparation task. The elderly were significantly weaker on standardized tests of executive functions and on the paper-pencil script generation task. An anticipation and a sequencing impairment clearly emerged. Though anticipation and shifting were compromised in the kitchenette script task, sequencing was however preserved. This supports Shallice's notion according to which scripting is hierarchically organized with top level components being more frontal lobe dependent (supervisory attentional system or SAS) and the lower level components more tributary to subcortical circuits involving procedural learning (contention scheduling or CS).
Godbout
L
L
Département de psychologie, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières.
Doucet
C
C
Fiola
M
M
D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012720:Severity of Illness Index