Divergent Thinking in Alzheimer's and Frontotemporal Dementia

Twenty-three patients with mild dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) or frontotemporal type (DFT) and age- and education-matched control subjects were administered tests of complex fluency involving divergent thinking and tests of letter, category, and figural fluency. The tests of complex fl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 2006-12, Vol.13 (3-4), p.281-290
Main Authors: Hart, Robert P., Wade, James B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aged
Alzheimer Disease - physiopathology
Analysis of Variance
Case-Control Studies
Cognition - physiology
Dementia - physiopathology
Female
Humans
Male
Neuropsychological Tests - statistics & numerical data
Thinking - physiology
Verbal Behavior - physiology
Word Association Tests - statistics & numerical data
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Summary:Twenty-three patients with mild dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) or frontotemporal type (DFT) and age- and education-matched control subjects were administered tests of complex fluency involving divergent thinking and tests of letter, category, and figural fluency. The tests of complex fluency discriminated the dementia patients from control subjects more strongly than did the other fluency tests. The results suggest that divergent thinking as assessed by complex fluency tests is a cognitive domain that is impaired early in the course of dementia. The sensitivity of complex fluency tests compared to that of letter, category, and figural fluency tests may be related to greater demands for conceptualization in relating stimulus attributes to function and greater demands for flexible thinking during self-directed search processes.
ISSN:1382-5585
1744-4128
DOI:10.1080/13825580490904246