Dementia Care Research and Psychosocial Factors

Area of Science:

• Neurolinguistics
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cross-cultural Studies

Background:

• Verbal fluency tasks are influenced by cultural-linguistic backgrounds.
• Previous studies show cultural differences in word retrieval among stroke aphasia patients.
• Alzheimer's disease (AD) may also exhibit culturally distinct verbal fluency patterns.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate cultural differences in animal fluency between Korean- and English-speaking individuals with AD.
• To analyze clustering and switching patterns in both Western and zodiac animal categories.
• To assess the predictive potential of these patterns for cognitive function in AD.

Main Methods:

• Thirty-six participants (18 Korean-AD, 18 English-AD) were recruited and matched on key demographics.
• A 60-second animal fluency task was administered.
• Culture-agnostic (total responses, switches, cluster size) and culture-specific (zodiac ratio, zodiac switches, mean zodiac cluster size) analyses were performed.

Main Results:

• No significant differences were found in culture-agnostic fluency measures between groups.
• Korean-AD patients demonstrated significantly higher zodiac ratios, zodiac switches, and mean zodiac cluster sizes.
• Number of zodiac switches (NOZS) emerged as the strongest predictor of Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores in Korean-AD.

Conclusions:

• Animal fluency tasks reveal culturally distinct retrieval patterns in Alzheimer's disease.
• Culture-specific categories, particularly those with East Asian features, are more strongly associated with cognitive decline in Korean-AD.
• Culturally sensitive analyses of verbal fluency provide valuable clinical insights for AD assessment.