Department of Psychology, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, Missouri, USA.
J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 2012 Nov;18(6):1052-63. doi: 10.1017/S1355617712000860. Epub 2012 Aug 29.
The current study examined whether healthy older adults (OA) and individuals at the earliest stages of dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) differ from younger adults (YA) and from each other on a simple, extended continuous tapping task using intervals (500 ms, 1000 ms, and 1500 ms) thought to differentially engage attentional control systems. OA groups sped up their tapping at the slowest target rate compared to the YA; this pattern was magnified in the early stage DAT groups. Performance variability appeared especially sensitive to DAT-related changes, as reliable differences between healthy OA and very mild DAT individuals emerged for multiple tap rates. These differences are proposed to result from breakdowns in attentional control that disrupt error-correction processes and the ability to resolve discrepancies between internally-generated temporal expectancies and the external temporal demands of the repetitive timing task.
本研究考察了在使用被认为可区分注意控制系统的简单扩展连续敲击任务（间隔为 500 毫秒、1000 毫秒和 1500 毫秒）时，健康老年人 (OA) 和处于阿尔茨海默病型痴呆的最早阶段 (DAT) 的个体与年轻成年人 (YA) 以及彼此之间是否存在差异。OA 组在最慢的目标速度下比 YA 组加快了敲击速度；在早期 DAT 组中，这种模式更为明显。表现的可变性似乎对 DAT 相关变化特别敏感，因为健康 OA 和非常轻度 DAT 个体在多个敲击速度下出现了可靠差异。这些差异据说是由于注意力控制的崩溃而导致的，这种崩溃破坏了错误纠正过程以及解决内部产生的时间预期与重复计时任务的外部时间要求之间差异的能力。
