Duverne Sandrine, Lemaire Patrick, Michel Bernard François
CNRS, Université de Provence, Marseille, France.
Brain Cogn. 2003 Aug;52(3):302-18. doi: 10.1016/s0278-2626(03)00168-4.
Three groups of healthy younger adults, healthy older adults, and probable AD patients, performed an addition/number comparison task. They compared 128 couples of additions and numbers (e.g., 4 + 9 15) and had to identify the largest item for each problem by pressing one of two buttons located under each item. Manipulations of problem characteristics (i.e., problem difficulty and splits between correct sums and proposed numbers) enabled us to examine strategy selection and specific arithmetic fact retrieval processes. Results showed that arithmetic facts retrieval processes, which were spared with aging, were impaired in AD patients. However, AD patients were able to switch between strategies across trials according to problem characteristics as well as healthy older adults, and less systematically than healthy younger adults. We discuss implications of these findings for further understanding AD-related differences in arithmetic in particular, and problem solving in general.
三组健康的年轻人、健康的老年人以及疑似阿尔茨海默病（AD）患者进行了加法/数字比较任务。他们比较了128对加法运算和数字（例如，4 + 9 15），并必须通过按下每个项目下方的两个按钮之一来识别每个问题中最大的项目。对问题特征的操纵（即问题难度以及正确总和与提议数字之间的差异）使我们能够研究策略选择和特定算术事实检索过程。结果表明，算术事实检索过程在衰老过程中未受影响，但在AD患者中受损。然而，AD患者能够像健康的老年人一样根据问题特征在不同试验中切换策略，且系统性不如健康的年轻人。我们讨论了这些发现对于进一步理解特别是与AD相关的算术差异以及一般问题解决的意义。
