Semantic and phonemic sequence effects in random word generation: A dissociation between Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease patients

Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients perform worse on category than letter fluency tasks, while Huntington's disease (HD) patients show the reverse pattern or comparable impairment on both tasks. We developed a random word generation task to further investigate these deficits. Twenty AD and 16 HD patients and 20 elderly and 16 middle-aged controls guessed which of three pictures (hat, cat, or dog) landed on a die's top face sixty times. Three consecutive response pairings were possible: semantic (cat–dog), phonemic (hat–cat), and neutral (hat–dog). Since healthy individuals avoid repeating meaningful associates (“repetition avoidance”), an increased pairing frequency reflects processing deficits. AD patients produced more semantic and HD patients more phonemic pairings compared to their respective control groups, indicating selective semantic and phonemic processing deficits in AD and HD patients, respectively. (JINS, 2005, 11, 303–310.)

[1]  D. Salmon,et al.  Differential decline in word generation from phonemic and semantic categories during the course of Alzheimer's disease: Implications for the integrity of semantic memory , 1999, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

[2]  R. Nebes.  Semantic memory in Alzheimer's disease. , 1989, Psychological bulletin.

[3]  N Butters,et al.  Episodic and semantic memory: a comparison of amnesic and demented patients. , 1987, Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology.

[4]  M C Ridding,et al.  The effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex on suppression of habitual counting during random number generation. , 1998, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[5]  M. Eisemann,et al.  Perceived parental rearing behaviour in patients with a schizophrenic disorder and its relationship to aspects of the course of the illness , 1996, Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica.

[6]  T. Robbins,et al.  Verbal fluency in Huntington’s disease: a longitudinal analysis of phonemic and semantic clustering and switching , 2002, Neuropsychologia.

[7]  N Butters,et al.  Differential impairment of semantic and episodic memory in Alzheimer's and Huntington's diseases: a controlled prospective study. , 1990, Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry.

[8]  D. Salmon,et al.  The nature of the naming deficit in Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease. , 1991, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[9]  R. S. Williams,et al.  Morphometric analysis of the prefrontal cortex in Huntington's disease , 1991, Neurology.

[10]  S. Cappa,et al.  Semantic memory in Alzheimer's disease: an analysis of category fluency. , 1995, Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology.

[11]  Semantic fluency in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's disease : dissociation of storage and retrieval failures , 1993 .

[12]  W. Marslen-Wilson,et al.  Accessing Different Types of Lexical Semantic Information: Evidence From Priming , 1995 .

[13]  Harvey G. Shulman,et al.  Similarity effects in short-term memory. , 1971 .

[14]  Peter Brugger,et al.  A comparison of category and letter fluency in Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease. , 1994 .

[15]  D. Salmon,et al.  Dimensionality and clustering in the semantic network of patients with Alzheimer's disease. , 1993, Psychology and aging.

[16]  Alex Martin,et al.  Word retrieval to letter and semantic cues: A double dissociation in normal subjects using interference tasks , 1994, Neuropsychologia.

[17]  J D Van Horn,et al.  A comparison of rCBF patterns during letter and semantic fluency. , 2000, Neuropsychology.

[18]  Daniel Kempler,et al.  Language Changes in Dementia of the Alzheimer Type , 1995 .

[19]  Jane S. Paulsen,et al.  The disparate effects of Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease on semantic memory. , 1999, Neuropsychology.

[20]  F. Pasquier,et al.  Verbal fluency in dementia of frontal lobe type and dementia of Alzheimer type. , 1995, Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry.

[21]  P. Brugger.  Variables That Influence the Generation of Random Sequences: An Update , 1997, Perceptual and motor skills.

[22]  N. Butters.  The clinical aspects of memory disorders: contributions from experimental studies of amnesia and dementia. , 1984, Journal of clinical neuropsychology.

[23]  R B Friedman,et al.  Lexical but not semantic priming in Alzheimer's disease. , 1991, Psychology and aging.

[24]  M. Forbes,et al.  Lexical decisions in patients with Alzheimer's disease: some notes on automatic versus controlled processing. , 1996, Journal of communication disorders.

[25]  A Capdevila,et al.  Frontal lobe activation during word generation studied by functional MRI , 1996, Acta neurologica Scandinavica.

[26]  S. Wiegersma.  Acoustic and semantic similarity effects on repetition avoidance in produced sequences , 1984, Memory & cognition.

[27]  Alex Martin,et al.  Word production and comprehension in Alzheimer's diseáse: The breakdown of semantic knowledge , 1983, Brain and Language.

[28]  J R Hodges,et al.  Initial letter and semantic category fluency in Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, and progressive supranuclear palsy. , 1994, Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry.

[29]  L. Cermak,et al.  Memory disorders associated with huntington's disease: Verbal recall, verbal recognition and procedural memory , 1985, Neuropsychologia.

[30]  M. Albert,et al.  Missile wounds of the brain: Freda Newcombe. Oxford University Press, London, 1969. 145 pp. 42s , 1970 .

[31]  P. Brugger,et al.  The roots of meaningful coincidence , 1995, The Lancet.

[32]  M. Grossman,et al.  Verbal and nonverbal fluency in patients with probable Alzheimer's disease. , 1994 .

[33]  Behavioral and Electrical Brain Measures of Semantic Priming in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease: Implications for Access Failure versus Deterioration Hypotheses , 2002, Brain and Cognition.

[34]  S. Wiegersma,et al.  Can repetition avoidance in randomization be explained by randomness concepts? , 1982 .

[35]  L. Thal,et al.  Clinical validity of the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale in detecting Dementia of the Alzheimer type. A double cross-validation and application to a community-dwelling sample. , 1995, Archives of neurology.

[36]  M. Folstein,et al.  SEMANTIC ACTIVATION AND IMPLICIT MEMORY IN ALZHEIMER DISEASE , 1988, Alzheimer disease and associated disorders.

[37]  C. Kawas,et al.  Changes in semantic memory in early stage Alzheimer's disease patients. , 1993, The Gerontologist.

[38]  D. Salmon,et al.  Semantic memory impairment in Alzheimer's disease: Failure of access or degraded knowledge? , 1992, Neuropsychologia.

[39]  R. Nebes,et al.  Preserved organization of semantic attributes in Alzheimer's disease. , 1990, Psychology and aging.

[40]  A. Baddeley.  Working memory and language: an overview. , 2003, Journal of communication disorders.

[41]  A. Yonelinas,et al.  Conceptual implicit memory performance in Alzheimer's disease. , 2001, Neuropsychology.

[42]  N Butters,et al.  Comparisons of verbal fluency tasks in the detection of dementia of the Alzheimer type. , 1992, Archives of neurology.

[43]  D. Kempler,et al.  Syntactic preservation in Alzheimer's disease. , 1987, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[44]  A. Burns.  Clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease , 1991 .

[45]  M. Posner,et al.  Development of Spontaneous Alternation in Infancy , 1991, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[46]  D. Bub,et al.  Semantic memory loss in dementia of Alzheimer's type. What do various measures measure? , 1990, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[47]  Jarl Risberg,et al.  Lateralized frontal blood flow increases during fluency tasks: influence of cognitive strategy , 1998, Neuropsychologia.

[48]  F W Bylsma,et al.  Longitudinal analysis of phonemic clustering and switching during word-list generation in Huntington's disease. , 1999, Neuropsychology.

[49]  J. Suhr,et al.  Letter and semantic fluency in Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's dementias. , 1998, Archives of clinical neuropsychology : the official journal of the National Academy of Neuropsychologists.

[50]  D. Salmon,et al.  A comparison of the category fluency deficits associated with Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease , 1989, Brain and Language.

[51]  Gail Ramsberger,et al.  Commonalities and differences in the working memory components underlying letter and category fluency tasks: a dual-task investigation. , 2002, Neuropsychology.

[52]  J. Brandt,et al.  Word-list generation deficits in dementia. , 1996, Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology.

[53]  P. Brugger,et al.  Random number generation in dementia of the Alzheimer type: A test of frontal executive functions , 1996, Neuropsychologia.