Serial position effects in Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, and normal aging: predictive value for conversion to dementia.
Serial position effects in word list learning have been used to differentiate normal aging and dementia. Prominent recency and diminished primacy have consistently been observed in Alzheimer's disease (AD). We examined serial position effects in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), in patients with AD, and in normal healthy controls. Additionally, we classified MCI patients into those who progressed to AD (MCI-p) and those who did not (MCI-np). We compared two serial position measures: regional and standard scores. Regional scores, mainly the primacy effect, improved discrimination between MCI and controls and between MCI-np and MCI-p, proving to be more sensitive and specific than the recency effect.
Department of Neurology, Neuropsychology Laboratory, Coimbra University Hospital, Coimbra, Portugal. catarina.cnh@gmail.com
Catarina
C
Cunha
Manuela
M
Guerreiro
Alexandre
A
de Mendonça
Paulo Eduardo
PE
Oliveira
Isabel
I
Santana
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000150:complications*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D060825:Cognitive Dysfunction / Q000150:complications*; D003704:Dementia / Q000209:etiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D018450:Disease Progression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012044:Regression Analysis; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D014825:Vocabulary