OBJECT AND ACTION NAMING IN ALZHEIMERS-DISEASE

We administered measures of object naming and action naming to matched groups of ten patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and ten normal c ontrol subjects. AD patients were impaired in both object and action n aming, with object naming impaired to a significantly greater extent t han action naming. This difference remained after controlling for the effects of word frequency. We propose that the pattern of pathological changes in AD impairs both conceptual and lexical retrieval systems f or objects but only conceptual systems for actions. The similar patter ns of error during the two tasks suggest quantitative rather than qual itative differences in the breakdown of the two abilities.