Department of Clinical and Developmental Neuropsychology, Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2011;6(12):e29254. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029254. Epub 2011 Dec 20.
Impairments in executive functioning are frequently observed in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, executive functioning needed in daily life is difficult to measure. Considering this difficulty the Cognitive Effort Test (CET) was recently developed. In this multi-task test the goals are specified but participants are free in their approach. This study applies the CET in PD patients and investigates whether initiative, planning and multi-tasking are associated with aspects of executive functions and psychomotor speed. Thirty-six PD patients with a mild to moderate disease severity and thirty-four healthy participants were included in this study. PD patients planned and demonstrated more sequential task execution, which was associated with a decreased psychomotor speed. Furthermore, patients with a moderate PD planned to execute fewer tasks at the same time than patients with a mild PD. No differences were found between these groups for multi-tasking. In conclusion, PD patients planned and executed the tasks of the CET sequentially rather than in parallel presumably reflecting a compensation strategy for a decreased psychomotor speed. Furthermore, patients with moderate PD appeared to take their impairments into consideration when planning how to engage the tasks of the test. This compensation could not be detected in patients with mild PD.
执行功能障碍在帕金森病（PD）中经常观察到。然而，日常生活中所需的执行功能很难衡量。考虑到这一困难，最近开发了认知努力测试（CET）。在这个多任务测试中，目标是明确的，但参与者可以自由选择方法。本研究将 CET 应用于 PD 患者，并调查主动性、计划性和多任务处理是否与执行功能和运动速度的各个方面相关。本研究纳入了 36 名轻度至中度疾病严重程度的 PD 患者和 34 名健康参与者。PD 患者计划并表现出更多的顺序任务执行，这与运动速度降低有关。此外，与轻度 PD 患者相比，中度 PD 患者同时计划执行的任务较少。这两个组在多任务处理方面没有差异。总之，PD 患者按顺序而不是并行计划和执行 CET 的任务，这可能反映了运动速度降低时的一种补偿策略。此外，中度 PD 患者在计划如何参与测试任务时似乎考虑到了自己的障碍。在轻度 PD 患者中，无法检测到这种补偿。
