Verbal Fluency Task in Alzheimer's disease

This book deals with the strategies that mild or moderately demented AD patients using the verb tasks. We have investigated the word generation, clustering and switching strategies of the sample as well as the effect of age and education. Tools used were the Mini Mental State Examination , the Verbal Fluency Task and the coding system of Troyer. Between the results we observed that as age increases, the total of verbal output in the Verbal fluency task decreases.Furthermore 12% of the variance of the words produced is predicted by education. Between the case and the control group no significant difference was found.The low semantic clustering in the case group in an indirect proof of the demolition on the semantic store.For the phonemic clustering there is no significant difference. This finding is in line with the opinion that semantic and phonemic fluency tasks reflect different cognitive processes. Concluding. we can say that this paper confirmed our expectation of a semantic defect as a component of the aphasia of AD patients. It has also showedthat education, even if not strongly, is positively related to the verbal output of all patients.