Discourse analysis of logical memory recall in normal aging and in Dementia of the Alzheimer Type

This study examined the nature of errors in prose recall made in dementia compared with normal aging. Responses by 48 young adults, 47 nondemented older adults, and 70 people with very mild or mild Alzheimer’s disease to the Logical Memory subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale were examined in a propositional analysis. Compared with young adults, healthy older adults showed good immediate recall but deficits in retention over a delay. Demented individuals made errors of omission, not commission, at immediate recall. These errors probably reflect difficulty with attentional control rather than memory per se. In terms of clinical implications, veridical scoring of the Logical Memory subtest provides more sensitive detection of very mild dementia of the Alzheimer type than the current standard criteria for scoring. Deficits in prose recall, as measured by the number of story units of the Logical Memory subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS; Wechsler, 1945) recalled word for word, are prominent in the early stages of dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT). The WMS Logical Memory subtes