An Evaluation of Deficits in Semantic Cueing and Proactive and Retroactive Interference as Early Features of Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract

OBJECTIVE To determine the degree to which susceptibility to different types of semantic interference may reflect the earliest manifestations of early Alzheimer disease (AD) beyond the effects of global memory impairment. METHODS Normal elderly (NE) subjects (n= 47), subjects with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI: n=34) and 40 subjects with probable AD were evaluated using a unique cued recall paradigm that allowed for an evaluation of both proactive and retroactive interference effects while controlling for global memory impairment (LASSI-L procedure). RESULTS Controlling for overall memory impairment, aMCI subjects had much greater proactive and retroactive interference effects than NE subjects. LASSI-L indices of learning using cued recall evidenced high levels of sensitivity and specificity with an overall correct classification rate of 90%. These provided better discrimination than traditional neuropsychological measures of memory function. CONCLUSION The LASSI-L paradigm is unique and unlike other assessments of memory in that items presented for cued recall are explicitly presented, and semantic interference and cuing effects can be assessed while controlling for initial level of memory impairment. This represents a powerful procedure allowing the participant to serve as his or her own control. The high levels of discrimination between subjects with aMCI and normal cognition that exceeded traditional neuropsychological measures makes the LASSI-L worthy of further research in the detection of early AD.

The cumulative semantic interference effect in normal and pathological ageing

“…The outcome is also congruent with the inability of MCI individuals to benefit from category-specific semantic cues in memory tasks (e.g., Curiel et al, 2013) and the proactive interference in active learning of list of items (see Loewenstein and Acevedo, 2005;Crocco et al, 2014). This impairment would be characterized by a disruption of the automatic links between semantic representations due to neurodegerative thinning out in the relevant cortical areas (Binder et al, 2009).…”

“…Within this frame, should lateralinhibition be zeroed, the activity of the non-target words would result in errors. The likelihood to make a mistake would be particularly accentuated if, for example, the co-activated, non-target lexical representation be of high frequency of occurrence or if it represented a word that has been recently processed and therefore primed (Vitkovitch et al, 1993), since in both of these cases the non-target representations would be particularly activated (Crocco et al, 2014). This leads to the following prediction: if the lateral inhibition were zeroed, as the ordinal position of the items in the category progresses from one to five, MCI participants should progressively increase the number of naming errors.…”

“…Thus, there are no reasons to predict a stronger cumulative semantic interference effect for the MCI group. Semantic processing (i.e., access to semantic information), however, is impaired in MCI (Curiel et al, 2013;Crocco et al, 2014;Joubert et al, 2010), and thus co-activation of representations of entities semantically similar to the target picture might be absent or limited. If so, MCI should (a) not show cumulative semantic interference effect and (b) show a regular repetition priming effect.…”

Understanding the cognitive underpinnings of functional impairments in early dementia: a review

“…In early dementia, semantic cueing specificity, or the ability to respond to cues of different semantic categories, is reported to deteriorate (Crocco, Curiel, Acevedo, Czaja, & Loewenstein, 2014;Tounsi et al, 1999). This decline in responding to different semantic cues has been attributed to semantic as well as attention deficits.…”

A novel cognitive assessment paradigm to detect Pre-mild cognitive impairment ( PreMCI ) and the relationship to biological markers of Alzheimer's disease

“…A unique feature of the LASSl-L is a second presentation of the second target list that taps failure to recover from proactive semantic interference (frPSl). The LASSl-L frPSl measure has been found to be: highly related to total and regional amyloid load in neuropsychologically normal community-dwelling elders (Loewenstein et al, 2016); has differentiated between aMCl patients with suspected AD from cognitively unimpaired elderly controls (CN) (Curiel et al, 2013; Crocco et al, 2014; Matías-Guiu et al, 2016); and has been associated with volumetric loss in AD prone areas among elders with amnestic MCl (Loewenstein et al, 2017b). …”