VISUOPERCEPTUAL-SPATIAL ABILITY AND VISUAL MEMORY IN VASCULAR DEMENTIA AND DEMENTIA OF THE ALZHEIMER-TYPE

This study investigated the relationship between visuoperceptual abili ty and visual memory in dementia. Twenty individuals with probable dem entia of the Alzheimer type, 24 individuals with probable vascular dem entia, and 20 healthy, elderly adults underwent neuropsychological eva luation. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses suggested that perc eptual organization skills contributed to a significant amount of the variance in novel, but not famous, face recognition. This finding was most robust in the clinical groups. Causality cannot be attributed fro m this regression model. Results suggest, however, that visual process ing deficits are more strongly related to the memory process at the ti me of encoding rather than during recognition of remote information.