[IContribution of lexical recall in the Set Test in Alzheimer disease screening]

We administered the Set Test to 128 control subjects and 82 patients with Alzheimer's disease. The subjects were to produce, within 15 seconds, items within specific categories: colors, animals, fruits and cities. Control subjects obtained a mean score of 40.3 +/- 3.6 and Alzheimer's disease patients a mean score of 2.7 +/- 4. We found a significant effect of item category, age and cultural level only in control subjects. There was an interaction between sex and item category in both groups. We observed a significant effect of the level of dementia as measured with the MMS only in the Set Test. The Set Test appears to require more attentional resources than fluency within two minutes.