Word-stem completion priming for perceptually and conceptually encoded words in patients with Alzheimer's disease

This study examined whether the frequently reported word-stem completion priming deficit of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients could be characterized as either a semantic encoding deficit or a conceptual priming deficit. AD patients and normal elderly control subjects studied words in two conditions: (1) reading visually presented words aloud, which maximizes perceptual encoding of seen words, and (2) generating words aloud from definitions, which maximizes conceptual encoding of words not seen but retrieved on the basis of semantic context. Recognition accuracy was greater for words that were generated at study, and word-stem completion priming was greater for words that were read at study. For the AD patients, recognition accuracy was impaired and word-stem completion priming was intact for words encoded in both conditions. The findings are discussed in terms of discrepant results about word-stem completion priming in AD.