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Updated: Apr 5, 2026

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment
Published on: June 25, 2019
Temporal changes in semantic and lexical access related to mild cognitive impairment
David Facal1, Onésimo Juncos-Rabadán2, Joan Guardia-Olmos3
1Departamento de Psicoloxía Evolutiva e da Educación, Facultade de Psicoloxía, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, rúa Xosé María Suárez Núñez, s/n. Campus vida, 15782, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain. david.facal@usc.es.
Background:
It has been hypothesized that the deterioration in the ability to name famous people in normal aging and cognitive impairment is a continuum in which meaning-based representations and form-based representations are differentially impaired, with early impairments in lexical access but not in semantic access.
Aims:
This hypothesis is tested in a follow-up study comparing the performance of fifty-six participants with amnestic mild cognitive impairment and forty-one control participants were assessed.
Method:
A lexical task was conducted involving recognition and naming of famous people from photographs. Proportional semantic and phonological access measures were calculated.
Results:
Comparisons revealed significant differences between baseline and follow-up, with improvements in semantic access in the control group and decrements in phonological access in the group with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Phonological access and reaction time measures were significantly and positively correlated, and semantic access and reaction time were significantly and negatively correlated.
Conclusions:
These results add evidence to the hypothesis that the decrease of processing resources is related to the increase of difficulties in lexical access throughout aging. Patterns of change must be replicated over longer periods of time.
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