Niedźwieńska Agnieszka, Kvavilashvili Lia
Department of Psychology.
Department of Psychology and Sport Sciences.
Neuropsychology. 2018 Sep;32(6):711-723. doi: 10.1037/neu0000457. Epub 2018 Jun 28.
Research on early cognitive markers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is primarily focused on declarative episodic memory tests that involve deliberate and effortful/strategic processes at retrieval. The present study tested the spontaneous retrieval deficit hypothesis, which predicts that people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), who are at increased risk of developing AD, are particularly impaired on tasks that rely on spontaneous retrieval processes.
Twenty-three participants with aMCI and 25 healthy controls (HC) completed an easy vigilance task and thought probes (reporting what was going through their mind), which were categorized as spontaneous thoughts about the past (i.e., involuntary memories), current situation, and future (i.e., spontaneous prospection).
Participants with aMCI reported significantly fewer spontaneous thoughts or mind-wandering than HC. This effect was driven by significantly fewer involuntary memories, although groups did not differ in the number of current and future thoughts.
Findings provide strong support for the spontaneous retrieval deficit hypothesis. Implications for research on mind-wandering and the default network, early cognitive markers of the disease, and our theoretical understanding of the nature of cognitive deficits in AD are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record
阿尔茨海默病（AD）早期认知标志物的研究主要集中在陈述性情景记忆测试上，这些测试在检索时涉及刻意且费力/策略性的过程。本研究检验了自发检索缺陷假说，该假说预测，处于AD发病风险增加的遗忘型轻度认知障碍（aMCI）患者，在依赖自发检索过程的任务上会表现出特别的受损。
23名aMCI参与者和25名健康对照（HC）完成了一项简单的警觉任务和思维探测（报告他们脑海中正在想什么），这些被分类为关于过去（即非自愿记忆）、当前状况和未来（即自发前瞻性思考）的自发思维。
与HC相比，aMCI参与者报告的自发思维或走神明显更少。这种效应是由非自愿记忆显著减少所驱动的，尽管两组在当前和未来思维的数量上没有差异。
研究结果为自发检索缺陷假说提供了有力支持。讨论了对走神和默认网络研究、该疾病早期认知标志物以及我们对AD认知缺陷本质的理论理解的启示。（PsycINFO数据库记录
