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Prose recall in dementia. A comparison of delay intervals
L L Chapman1, D A White, M Storandt
1Department of Psychology, Washington University, St Louis, Mo., USA.
Objective:
To explore one methodological variation, delay length, that may contribute to contradictory findings in the literature regarding the use of delayed recall in the detection of early-stage dementia of the Alzheimer type.
Design:
Comparison of participants with dementia and without dementia on a prose recall task at both 10- and 30-minute delay intervals.
Setting:
Washington University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, St Louis, Mo.
Participants:
Participants with very mild dementia of the Alzheimer type (n = 136) and uncompromised elderly individuals (n = 197).
Main Outcome Measures:
Results of the Logical Memory subtest from the Wechsler Memory Scale with immediate recall and 10- and 30-minute delayed recall.
Results:
Participants with dementia recalled significantly less material than elderly controls at both immediate and delayed recall (P < .001). Multiple regression analyses revealed that dementia classification failed to account for additional variance in the 30-minute delayed score beyond that which could be accounted for by the immediate score. A small but significant proportion of variance was accounted for in the 10-minute delayed score beyond that which could be accounted for by the immediate recall score.
Conclusion:
Delayed recall of a prose passage does not appear to enhance the differentiation of very mild dementia of the Alzheimer type from normal aging in a meaningful way, whether the recall delay is 10 or 30 minutes.