Date of Award

2-2-1989

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Forty eight elderly subjects who were residents of nursing homes and retirement centers participated in the study which was designed to evaluate verbal memory functioning in presumed Senile Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type (SDAT). Half of the subjects exhibited significant decline in memory as evidenced by raw scores of 50 or below on the Wechsler Memory Scale. Declines in memory were not attributable to depression, cerebrovascular accident, alcohol abuse or severe mental disorders. The demented group performed lower than the group with intact memory on a measure of verbal ability. The memory tasks employed were free recall of word lists, recognition of words from lists, prose recall, and release from Proactive Inhibition (PI). For the free recall task, impairment in recall from long-term store was found for the demented group while the groups were not different in recall from short-term store. On this task, the groups did not differ in their output strategy and favored the initial items of the lists. The demented group demonstrated lower recognition of items from word lists compared to the groups with intact memory. For the prose recall task, the demented group exhibited a reduced overall recall of idea units but continued to favor the important idea units in their recall productions. This finding suggested impairments when information was manipulated in short-term store. Reduced overall recall was found for the demented group on the release from PI task but both groups demonstrated the release from PI. The finding of a difference in verbal ability between the groups was problematic in that findings may be attributable to differences in verbal ability rather than memory. The failure to find significant interactions with group on the recognition, prose recall and release from PI tasks suggested that the demented group exhibited quantitative changes in memory processes on these tasks, much like studies comparing intact normal elderly and young adults, as opposed to qualitative changes.

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