Ana Comesaña

Evaluación de las redes semánticas de conceptos académicos en estudiantes universitarios

The Extended Theory of the Propagation of the Activation is one of the more accepted models to represent the information stored in the long term memory. In this model isolated concepts do not have meaning but they acquire it by their relation with the others. The aim of this paper is to communicate the results of an experience in which it was applied a method to estimate the semantic distances (Distsem) between nine concepts of the subject cognitive psychology in three instances, individual initial, group and individual final. The participants were 225 students from third year of the career of psychology (National University of Mar del Plata) that were taking the course of cognitive psychology. Subjects were asked to estimate the proximity between random pairs of concepts and then it was

Spanish semantic feature production norms for 400 concrete concepts.

Semantic feature production norms provide many quantitative measures of different feature and concept variables that are necessary to solve some debates surrounding the nature of the organization, both normal and pathological, of semantic memory. Despite the current existence of norms for different languages, there are still no published norms in Spanish. This article presents a new set of norms collected from 810 participants for 400 living and nonliving concepts among Spanish speakers. These norms consist of empirical collections of features that participants used to describe the concepts. Four files were elaborated: a concept–feature file, a concept–concept matrix, a feature–feature matrix, and a significantly correlated features file. We expect that these norms will be useful for researchers in the fields of experimental psychology, neuropsychology, and psycholinguistics.

Análisis de tareas de fluidez verbal en enfermos de alzheimer y adultos sanos

Verbal fl uency tasks are widely used to assess cognitive functioning, due to its simplicity and ease of administration. They are divided into semantic and phonemic, and require the recall of words of a given category and words that begin with a certain letter, respectively, in a limited period of time. Both tasks involve search and retrieval in semantic memory, and executive functioning. In order to study these cognitive functions in Alzheimer ́s disease, semantic (animals) and phonemic (words beginning with p) fl uency tasks were applied to 40 healthy adults and 31 Alzheimer ́s disease patients, matched for age, gender and educational level, as these tasks have proven to be sensitive to the cognitive impairment characteristic of this disease. We considered the number of correct words generated, the mean cluster 1 Dirección para correspondencia: Avellaneda 2145, 7600, Mar del Plata, Argentina 7600. E-mail: acomesan@ mdp.Edu.ar y anitacom2@gmail.com Esta investigación ha sido fi nanciada con una beca doctoral del Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científi cas y Técnicas. Comesaña, A., Coni, A. G. 270 size and the number of switches. To analyze the differences between groups we used a t-test and found that the number of correct words generated (p < .001) and the number of switches (semantic fl uency: p < .001; phonemic fl uency: p = .005) were statistically different in both tasks, whereas no differences were found regarding the mean cluster size. These results show an executive failure and, therefore, bring evidence that favors the idea that an executive impairment, and not only a mnesic one, is characteristic of this disease.

Cognitive functioning: is it all or none?

Under various circumstances, the cognitive system operates in a global manner that is not very precise and barely discriminatory. This form of operating has been described via a general principal that Diamond (Developmental Psychology 45:130–138, 2009) has denominated the All or None Hypothesis. This author has described a set of corollaries derived from this hypothesis that make it possible to verify it in each one of these domains. Although there is evidence of the global and non-discriminate way in which the cognitive system operates in populations of children, to date, there are no studies that have examined whether this mode of operation is also present in populations of adults. Researchers have yet to determine whether these corollaries apply to middle-aged adults. For this reason, this is the current study’s principal objective. A sample of 73 participants with ages ranging from 18 to 57 of both genders was evaluated. A modified version of the arrows test in Davidson et al. (Neuropsychologia 44:2037–2078, 2006) was used to analyze the three corollaries. The results obtained in this study can be interpreted as evidence in favor of the corollaries analyzed herein. Furthermore, they indicate that adult populations have a global response mode that is barely differentiated and that is activated by default in the face of problems and situations that demand behaviors and/or thoughts that are not very analytical and differentiated. However, in contexts that demand greater discrimination, this global mode is substituted by a controlled mode that requires greater cognitive effort and more differentiated processing.

DIFFERENCES IN SEMANTIC FEATURE PRODUCTION BETWEEN HEALTHY OLDER AND YOUNG ADULTS

High Risk and LowAverage/poorMemory class were at an elevated risk of developing incident dementia (HR 1⁄4 13.6, 95%CI 1⁄4 5.9 -31.2 and HR 1⁄4 5.8, 95%CI 1⁄4 2.6 – 12.8) and incident AD (HR 1⁄4 11.1, 95%CI 1⁄4 4.7 – 25.9, and HR 1⁄4 5.0, 95%CI 1⁄4 2.2 – 11.2) in the first four years from baseline assessment, while participants in the Dysexecutive Function class were at an elevated risk for incident all-cause dementia and incident AD after four years of follow-up (HR 1⁄4 6.0, 95%CI 1⁄4 2.5 – 14.3, and HR 1⁄4 7.1, 95%CI 1⁄4 2.7 – 18.4). Results in the Elite class were not applicable in the first 4 years since therewere no cases and, after 4 years results were not significant (there were only 5 cases in total). Conclusions: This study highlights the clinical applicability of the association between a patient’s cognitive profile and future risk of all-cause dementia and AD. This area of research may lead to personalized risk profiles.

Análise de tarefas de fluência verbal em pacientes com doença de alzheimer e adultos saudáveis

Verbal fl uency tasks are widely used to assess cognitive functioning, due to its simplicity and ease of administration. They are divided into semantic and phonemic, and require the recall of words of a given category and words that begin with a certain letter, respectively, in a limited period of time. Both tasks involve search and retrieval in semantic memory, and executive functioning. In order to study these cognitive functions in Alzheimer ́s disease, semantic (animals) and phonemic (words beginning with p) fl uency tasks were applied to 40 healthy adults and 31 Alzheimer ́s disease patients, matched for age, gender and educational level, as these tasks have proven to be sensitive to the cognitive impairment characteristic of this disease. We considered the number of correct words generated, the mean cluster 1 Dirección para correspondencia: Avellaneda 2145, 7600, Mar del Plata, Argentina 7600. E-mail: acomesan@ mdp.Edu.ar y anitacom2@gmail.com Esta investigación ha sido fi nanciada con una beca doctoral del Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científi cas y Técnicas. Comesaña, A., Coni, A. G. 270 size and the number of switches. To analyze the differences between groups we used a t-test and found that the number of correct words generated (p < .001) and the number of switches (semantic fl uency: p < .001; phonemic fl uency: p = .005) were statistically different in both tasks, whereas no differences were found regarding the mean cluster size. These results show an executive failure and, therefore, bring evidence that favors the idea that an executive impairment, and not only a mnesic one, is characteristic of this disease.

Analysis of verbal fluency tasks in alzheimer's disease patients and healthy adults

Verbal fl uency tasks are widely used to assess cognitive functioning, due to its simplicity and ease of administration. They are divided into semantic and phonemic, and require the recall of words of a given category and words that begin with a certain letter, respectively, in a limited period of time. Both tasks involve search and retrieval in semantic memory, and executive functioning. In order to study these cognitive functions in Alzheimer ́s disease, semantic (animals) and phonemic (words beginning with p) fl uency tasks were applied to 40 healthy adults and 31 Alzheimer ́s disease patients, matched for age, gender and educational level, as these tasks have proven to be sensitive to the cognitive impairment characteristic of this disease. We considered the number of correct words generated, the mean cluster 1 Dirección para correspondencia: Avellaneda 2145, 7600, Mar del Plata, Argentina 7600. E-mail: acomesan@ mdp.Edu.ar y anitacom2@gmail.com Esta investigación ha sido fi nanciada con una beca doctoral del Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científi cas y Técnicas. Comesaña, A., Coni, A. G. 270 size and the number of switches. To analyze the differences between groups we used a t-test and found that the number of correct words generated (p < .001) and the number of switches (semantic fl uency: p < .001; phonemic fl uency: p = .005) were statistically different in both tasks, whereas no differences were found regarding the mean cluster size. These results show an executive failure and, therefore, bring evidence that favors the idea that an executive impairment, and not only a mnesic one, is characteristic of this disease.