(Category-specific) semantic deficit in Alzheimer's patients: The role of semantic distance

• Published in: Neuropsychologia Vol. 44; no. 1; pp. 52 - 61
• Main Authors: Zannino, Gian Daniele, Perri, Roberta, Pasqualetti, Patrizio, Caltagirone, Carlo, Carlesimo, Giovanni A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 2006; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Aged; Alzheimer Disease - complications; Alzheimer's disease; Biological and medical sciences; Category-specific deficits; Degenerative and inherited degenerative diseases of the nervous system. Leukodystrophies. Prion diseases; Female; Humans; Language Disorders - etiology; Language Tests - statistics & numerical data; Male; Medical sciences; Neurology; Neuropsychological Tests - statistics & numerical data; Organic mental disorders. Neuropsychology; Paired-Associate Learning - physiology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Regression Analysis; Semantic distance; Semantic memory; Semantics; Semantic memory; Semantic distance; Alzheimer's disease; Category-specific deficits; Human; Nervous system diseases; Cognitive disorder; Alzheimer disease; Cognition; Cerebral disorder; Language; Semantics; Central nervous system disease; Degenerative disease; Categorization; Elderly
• ISSN: 0028-3932; 1873-3514
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2005.04.008

A semantic battery comprising items from living and nonliving categories was administered to a sample of subjects suffering from probable Alzheimer's type dementia ( n = 20). The results were analyzed to test the role of semantic distance in predicting group accuracy and its possible causal link with the phenomenon of a category-specific deficit for living things in the experimental population. Our findings confirm a category effect favoring nonliving items (over and above the role of confounding variables) in patients with Alzheimer's disease and support the major role of an imbalance of semantic distance in the testing material in the genesis of this phenomenon.