Nebes R D, Brady C B
Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213.
Psychol Aging. 1990 Dec;5(4):574-9. doi: 10.1037//0882-7974.5.4.574.
This study investigated whether Alzheimer's disease (AD) disrupts the basic organization of the semantic attributes of concepts. Young and normal older subjects and AD patients were presented with a target concept followed by a stimulus word and were to decide whether the stimulus was related to the target. On those trials where it was, the stimulus was either a high-, medium-, or low-dominance attribute of the target. The higher the normative dominance, the more important the attribute to concept meaning. In all 3 subject groups, decision time varied as a function of dominance. The higher the dominance, the faster the decision. Attribute dominance affected the performance of AD patients more than that of normal subjects. These results suggest that AD patients retain their knowledge of the relative importance that the different attributes of a concept have for concept meaning.
本研究调查了阿尔茨海默病（AD）是否会扰乱概念语义属性的基本组织。向年轻和正常的老年受试者以及AD患者呈现一个目标概念，随后呈现一个刺激词，并要求他们判断该刺激是否与目标相关。在刺激与目标相关的试验中，刺激词要么是目标的高主导性、中等主导性或低主导性属性。规范主导性越高，该属性对概念意义就越重要。在所有三个受试者组中，决策时间随主导性而变化。主导性越高，决策越快。属性主导性对AD患者表现的影响比对正常受试者的影响更大。这些结果表明，AD患者保留了他们对概念的不同属性对概念意义的相对重要性的认识。
