Nonspecificity of semantic impairment in dementia of Alzheimer's type
P. Fischer, G. Gatterer, A. Marterer and W. Danielczyk
Neurological Institute, Vienna School of Medicine, Austria.
Two psychometric tests designed to evaluate "verbal fluency" and "naming"
as a measure of semantic memory were presented to 18 patients with
Alzheimer's-type dementia, 16 other patients with multi-infarct dementia,
and 14 age-matched control subjects. The diagnosis of multi-infarct
dementia and Alzheimer's-type dementia was based on the commonly accepted
criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, ed
3. Although the patients with Alzheimer and multi-infarct dementias,
respectively, suffered from a comparable degree of dementia (as determined
by the Mini-Mental State examination), semantic memory was not specifically
impaired in Alzheimer's-type dementia as opposed to multi-infarct dementia.
In contrast semantic memory was correlated with the degree of dementia in
both disease entities.
