Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, University of North Texas Health Sciences Center, Fort Worth, TX, USA.
Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn. 2011 May;18(3):353-61. doi: 10.1080/13825585.2011.557495. Epub 2011 Mar 4.
Measures of verbal fluency are widely used in the assessment of cognitive functioning of the elderly. However, limited research has evaluated patterns (across specific timed intervals) of performance on tasks of language fluency in different forms of dementia. The current study investigated semantic fluency in 488 elderly individuals (249 with Alzheimer's dementia, 97 Vascular dementia, 97 Mild Cognitive Impairment and 45 cognitively intact) across 15-second intervals in an animal naming task using retrospective chart review. Normal controls produced significantly more exemplars and AD patients produced fewer animal names than the other groups. After the first 15- second time interval, the demented groups produced significantly fewer exemplars than the non-demented. At the end of 30 seconds it was possible to differentiate normal aging from MCI who no longer differed from the VaD group. Overall, it appears that the greatest and most clinically meaningful differences between the diagnostic groups were detected in the first three 15-second intervals. The present findings support the use of time intervals and total scores on tasks of verbal fluency in clinical settings and for research purposes.
语言流畅性测试被广泛应用于老年人认知功能的评估。然而，关于不同形式痴呆患者在语言流畅性任务中表现模式（在特定时间间隔内）的研究还很有限。本研究通过回顾性图表审查，在动物命名任务中，对 488 名老年人（249 名阿尔茨海默病痴呆患者、97 名血管性痴呆患者、97 名轻度认知障碍患者和 45 名认知正常者）在 15 秒间隔内进行了语义流畅性测试。正常对照组产生的例子明显多于 AD 患者，而 AD 患者产生的动物名称明显少于其他组。在第一个 15 秒时间间隔后，痴呆组产生的例子明显少于非痴呆组。在 30 秒结束时，正常衰老与 MCI 可以区分开来，MCI 与 VaD 组不再有差异。总的来说，在第一个三个 15 秒间隔内，诊断组之间的差异最大且最具有临床意义。本研究结果支持在临床和研究中使用语言流畅性任务的时间间隔和总分数。
