Impairments of social cognition and decision making in Alzheimer's disease

Objective: To investigate the nature of deficits in social cognition and re al-life decision making in a group of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD ). Design: A comprehensive neuropsychological and psychiatric assessment, i ncluding the Moral Judgment Interview and the Bechara's Card Test, was carr ied out in 25 patients with AD and 20 age-comparable normal controls. Setti ng: Outpatient clinic. Results: AD patients had significantly lower scores in the Moral Judgment Interview and obtained significantly less earnings in the card test when compared to the normal control group. The Moral Judgmen t Interview score correlated significantly with Raven's Progressive Matrice s and Block Design, whereas the card test correlated significantly with bot h the Benton Visual Retention Test and the Buschke Selective Reminding Test . No significant correlations were observed between the experimental tasks and the psychiatric variables. Conclusions: AD patients demonstrated signif icant deficits on tasks assessing social cognition and real-life decision m aking. These impairments correlated with deficits on specific neuropsycholo gical tasks, but not with behavioral problems frequently found in AD patien ts.