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Alzheimer’s disease, category-specific impairment and relevant variables in object naming

F.J. Moreno-Martínez, A. Tallón-Barranco, A. Frank [REV NEUROL 2007;44:129-133] PMID: 17285515 DOI: https://doi.org/10.33588/rn.4403.2006284

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Volumen 44 | Number 03 | Nº of views of the article 6.614 | Nº of PDF downloads 1.924 | Article publication date 01/02/2007

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ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION The study of the dissociations or category-specific effects between the domains of living beings and non-living beings in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a controversial issue in the cognitive neurosciences. The lack of agreement among the different studies may be due to deficient control of certain cognitive and psycholinguistic variables that affect processing of the items.

AIM To determine whether the presence of category-specific effects in AD can be caused by inadequate control of variables, such as the typicality or familiarity of the items. Furthermore, since the groups may contain different types of patients with opposing impairments (which would mask this kind of effect in the group analysis), both group and individual analyses were conducted.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS A retrospective study was carried out to evaluate 66 participants (32 patients with AD) using a colour photo naming task with items controlled for seven disruptive variables.

RESULTS No evidence of living/non-living dissociation was found in the analyses by groups, although the individual-based analysis did show some cases of category-specific effects.

CONCLUSIONS Our data show that category-specific effects are not as widespread as they were believed to be and that the lack of control over the so-called disturbing variables may play an important role in studies on category-specific impairment. Our study also highlights the importance of conducting individual analyses in order to avoid overlooking certain effects that are masked in the group studies. KeywordsAlzheimer’s disease Category-specific impairment Group and individual analysis Intrinsic variables Living and nonliving domains CategoriesDemencia Neurodegeneración

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Alzheimer’s disease, category-specific impairment and relevant variables in object naming

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