Semantic Priming in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Healthy Subjects: Effect of Different Time of Presentation of Word-Pairs

Journal of Personalized Medicine

Camillo Marra¹  Claudia Carrarini¹  Alice Innocenti¹  Ilaria Mega¹  EmanueleMaria Costantini¹  Valeria Guglielmi²  Davide Quaranta² 

[1] Department of Neuroscience, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, 00168 Rome, Italy;Neurology Unit, Fondazione Policlinico Agostino Gemelli-IRCCS, 00168 Rome, Italy;

关键词: Alzheimer disease;    semantic priming;    mild cognitive impairment;   

DOI  :  10.3390/jpm10030057

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Introduction: Semantic memory is impaired in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Two
main hypotheses about this finding are debated and refer to the degradation of stored knowledge
versus the impairment of semantic access mechanisms. The aim of our study is to evaluate semantic
impairment in MCI versus healthy subjects (HS) by an experiment evaluating semantic priming.
Methods: We enrolled 27 MCI and 20 HS. MCI group were divided, according to follow up, into
converters-MCI and non converters-MCI. The semantic task consisted of 108 pairs of words, 54 of
which were semantically associated. Stimuli were presented 250 or 900 ms later the appearance of
the target in a randomized manner. Data were analyzed using factorial ANOVA. Results: Both HS
and MCI answered more quickly for word than for non-word at both stimulus onset asynchrony
(SOA) intervals. At 250 ms, both MCI and HS experienced a shorter time of response for relatedword
than for unrelated words (priming effect), while only the converters-MCI subgroup lost the
priming effect. Further, we observed a rather larger Cohen’s d effect size in non converters-MCI
than in converters-MCI. Conclusion: Our data, and in particular the absence of a semantic priming
effect in converters-MCI, could reflect the impairment of semantic knowledge rather than the
accessibility of semantic stores in MCI individuals that progress to dementia.

【 授权许可】

Unknown