THE USE OF ORGANIZATIONAL PRINCIPLES IN NAMING GENERATION - ITS RELATION TO TIME-DEPENDENCY IN NORMAL ELDERLY AND ALZHEIMER PATIENTS

Nineteen elderly-ten healthy and nine Alzheimer patients-were given a naming-generation task. Their responses were analyzed according to wor d-type and inter-word relatedness. The results were correlated with th e Mini-Mental-State Examination (MMSE) and examined to elucidate time- dependency. In healthy subjects it was found that time-dependency exis ts for the number of new words and for percent of phonetically-related words, while for Alzheimer patients, time-dependency was exhibited in new words only. Results are discussed in terms of the principles of s emantic-memory organization and time-dependency of cognitive-linguisti c functions. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserve d.