Priming for new associations in normal aging and in mild dementia of the Alzheimer type

peer reviewedRecent data suggest that patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are able to showperceptual priming and, to some extent, conceptual priming for material which has pre-existing representations in memory, and that normal elderly subjects are able toautomatically activate pre-existing representations in both perceptual and conceptual primingtasks. An important question concerns the capacity of showing priming for materials withoutpre-existing representations in memory in normal and pathological aging. In order to addressthis issue, 20 patients with mild AD, 20 elderly controls and 20 young controls subjectswere assessed with a paradigm of priming for new verbal associations. Neither the patientsnor the normal elderly subjects demonstrated priming effects for new associations, whileyoung subjects showed significant priming effects. These results suggest that the absence ofpriming for new verbal associations is attributable more to an effect of aging than to aspecific effect of Alzheimer’s disease