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Updated: Jun 26, 2026
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Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment
Published on: June 25, 2019
Semantic knowledge for famous names in mild cognitive impairment
Michael Seidenberg1, Leslie Guidotti, Kristy A Nielson
1Department of Psychology, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, North Chicago, Illinois. michael.seidenberg@rosalindfranklin.edu
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society : JINS
|January 9, 2009
Summary
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients showed deficits in identifying famous people compared to controls. This suggests difficulties in updating semantic knowledge, particularly for recent information.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neurology
Background:
- Person identification is a key semantic knowledge category often impaired in Alzheimer's disease (AD).
- Semantic knowledge retrieval in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) remains under-investigated.
- Specific deficits in semantic memory for individuals with amnestic MCI (aMCI) are not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine semantic knowledge retrieval for famous names across different time periods in individuals with aMCI.
- To compare semantic knowledge performance between aMCI patients and healthy elderly controls.
- To explore the relationship between episodic memory and semantic knowledge in aMCI.
Main Methods:
- The study involved 23 participants with aMCI and 23 healthy elderly controls.
- Participants retrieved semantic knowledge for famous names from recent, remote, and enduring time epochs.
- Performance was assessed based on accuracy and quantity of semantic knowledge produced.
Main Results:
- The aMCI group demonstrated lower accuracy and less semantic knowledge retrieval compared to controls.
- Enduring famous names were recognized faster than recent and remote names in both groups.
- Remote names were recognized faster than recent names.
- Episodic memory performance correlated with semantic knowledge, especially for recent names.
Conclusions:
- Anterograde memory deficits in aMCI may hinder the learning and updating of recent semantic information.
- MCI patients experience difficulties integrating new semantic knowledge with existing information.
- Findings contribute to characterizing semantic memory deficits in the progression from MCI to dementia.
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