Lions, tigers, and bears, oh no! Differential effects of demographic variables on category fluency in Alzheimer's disease
Year: 1999
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: s from the 19th Annual Meetingdid not show significant practice effects over repeated administrations, even after a relatively brief test-retest interval, suggesting the robust nature of this task in AD.Cooper, D. B., Epker, M. 0., & Cullum, C. M. Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh No. t Differential Effects of Demographic Variables on Category Fluency in Alzheimer's Disease.Verbal fluency tasks are commonly used in the assessment of dementia, and a number of studies have reported disproportional declines in category versus letter fluency in Alzheimer's disease (AD).Multiple measures of category fluency exist (e.g., animals, fruits, vegetables, and states, etc.), although it is unclear to what extent demographic factors may affect various category fluency tasks in AD, We examined the impact of age, gender, and education level on three measures of category fluency (animals, fruits and vegetables, and supermarket items) in 117 subjects diagnosed with probable AD (62% female).Pearson correlations revealed a small but significant negative relationship between age and both animal (r = -.28,p < .01)and supermarket (r = -.29,p = .001),while chi-square analyses indicated that gender did not significantly impact performance on any of the fluency tasks.Overall, fruit and vegetable fluency was least sensitive to the effects of demographic variables.These findings suggest that all category fluency tasks are not interchangeable and in fact are differentially sensitive to age and education effects.Among the category fluency variables examined in this study, it appears that fruit and vegetable fluency results can be interpreted without age-and education-based corrections that may be necessary for other commonly administered category fluency tasks.
Authors: D.B. Cooper, M.O. Epker, C.M. Cullum
Language: English
Subfield: Psychiatry and Mental health
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2029692393