The impact of dementia, age and sex on category fluency: Greater deficits in women with Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

AgingCategory specific Semantics Sex differences APOE a b s t r a c t A category specific effect in naming tasks has been reported in patients with Alzheimer's dementia. Nonetheless, naming tasks are frequently affected by methodological problems, e.g. ceiling effects for controls and ''nuisance variables'' that may confound results.Semantic fluency tasks could help to address some of these methodological difficulties, because they are not prone to producing ceiling effects and are less influenced by nuisance variables. One hundred and thirty-three participants (61 patients with probable AD; and 72 controls: 36 young and 36 elderly) were evaluated with semantic fluency tasks in 14 semantic categories. Category fluency was affected both by dementia and by age: while in nonliving-thing categories there were differences among the three groups, in living thing categories larger lexical categories produced bigger differences among groups. Sex differences in fluency emerged, but these were moderated both by age and by pathology. In particular, fluency was smaller in female than male Alzheimer patients for almost every subcategory.

Asymmetries in Gender-Related Familiarity with Different Semantic Categories. Data from Normal Adults

“…Similar asymmetries have been found on speed-ed naming [26] and identification [27] tasks, on name generation tasks [29], on semantic fluency tasks [7,8,31], on object decision tasks [4] and using the semantic priming paradigm [5]. Asymmetries consistent with those observed in normal subjects have also been found in brain-damaged patients [9,16,17,23,25,30,31,33]. In these studies a relative sparing of categories showing a gender-related advantage in normal subjects has usually been observed.…”

“…These unexpected results could, perhaps, be due to the fact that young men and women included in the studies of MorenoMartinez et al [33] and of Gainotti et al [18] were undergraduate students, belonging to a generation in which the traditional social roles have almost completely disappeared. An argument in favour of this point comes from the fact that in the above mentioned study of Moreno-Martinez et al [33], differences consistent with the importance of social-role related familiarity factors have been observed in an elderly group. Older females showed, indeed, greater fluency for flowers, vegetables and kitchen utensils, whereas elderly males showed better fluency for musical instruments.…”

“…[8,23,[25][26][27][28][29][30]) report that males are more proficient with artefacts and females with biological stimuli. Other authors have, however, argued that the pattern of genderrelated asymmetries is more complex, because, within the living categories, men seem more proficient with 'animals' and women with fruit and vegetables [1,32,29,16,17,3,7,33,35]. Furthermore, within the artefact categories men seem to fare better with tools and women with 'furniture' and 'kitchen utensils' [1,31,33].…”

“…This author suggested that only the distinction between living and non living things reflects an inborn anatomically-based categorical organization, whereas the discrepancy (within living entities) between animals and plant life might be due to social roles related familiarity factors, namely to men's greater familiarity with animals and women's with fruits and vegetables. The hypothesis that gender-related asymmetries may be experience-dependent is supported by the dissociations observed within the artefact categories, in which men are more proficient with tools and women with 'furniture' and 'kitchen utensils' [1,31,33]. The same hypothesis is, however, seemingly at variance with results recently obtained in young men and women by Moreno-Martinez et al [33], studying semantic fluency on different subcategories of living and non-living things and by Gainotti et al [18] assessing their familiarity with different 'biological' and 'artefact' categories.…”

“…The hypothesis that gender-related asymmetries may be experience-dependent is supported by the dissociations observed within the artefact categories, in which men are more proficient with tools and women with 'furniture' and 'kitchen utensils' [1,31,33]. The same hypothesis is, however, seemingly at variance with results recently obtained in young men and women by Moreno-Martinez et al [33], studying semantic fluency on different subcategories of living and non-living things and by Gainotti et al [18] assessing their familiarity with different 'biological' and 'artefact' categories. No difference was, indeed, observed in these studies between young males and females on any of the categories taken into account.…”