Ilaria Bizzozero

Who is who: Italian norms for visual recognition and identification of celebrities

Age-, education- and sex-adjusted norms are provided for two new neuropsychological tests, namely (i) Face Recognition (guess of familiarity) and (ii) Person Identification (biographical contextualisation). Sixty-three pictures of celebrities and 63 of unknown people were selected following two interwoven criteria1: the realm of their celebrity (i. e., entertainment, culture and politics) and the period of celebrity acquisition (i. e., pre-war, post-war and contemporary). Both media- and education-dependent knowledge of celebrity were considered. Ninety-eight unpaid healthy participants aged between 50 and 93 years and with at least 8 years of formal education took part in this study. Reference is made to serial models of familiar face/persons processing. Recognition is held to tackle the activity of Personal Identity Nodes (PINs) and identification of the Exemplar Semantics Archives. Given the seriality of the reference model, the Identification Test is embedded in the Recognition test. This entailed that only previously recognised faces were employed to achieve norms for identification.

What do you know about Ho Chi Minh? Italian norms of proper name comprehension.

Ninety-eight healthy participants were examined with a new test of Famous Name Comprehension which, in the framework of a serial model of person processing, sequentially assessed Name Recognition (i.e., the ability to classify items as familiar or unfamiliar) and Person Identification (i.e., the ability to provide biographical knowledge of recognised items). Names were presented in a written format. A perfectly equivalent face version of the test allowed a comparison of familiarity and identification of people from name and from face input. Furthermore, the effect of the “age” of the items, i.e. the time elapsed from the presumed first exposure to the stimulus to the time of testing, was also investigated. Normative data are provided. Education was the only significant variable for recognition, while education, age and gender turned out to be significant for identification. Recognition was significantly better with name than with face input, while on identification names and faces did not differ significantly. “Oldest” items were both recognised and identified significantly worse than recent ones. The results of face-name comparison are interpreted in terms of the different opportunities to be exposed to names and faces, the relevance of visuoperceptual attributes linked to faces and the evidence of shared knowledge from different inputs. The relative advantage of recent celebrities supports the semantic characterisation of knowledge of famous people.

Mild cognitive impairment does entail retrograde amnesia for public events

In this study memory for public events was evaluated in 15 amnesic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients, whose clinical diagnosis was refined through a stringent selection procedure. A total of 9 patients were longitudinally reassessed over an 18-month period. About half of the participants were impaired at baseline and nearly 80% at the end of the 18-month follow-up. Moreover, retrograde memory declined significantly over time. Evidence of a pathological Ribot-type temporal gradient was found in about half of the aMCI patients. This is the first report of a remote memory deficit in aMCI. It highlights amnesia for public events as a frequent accompaniment of this condition. The findings tie in with the hypothesized role of the hippocampal complex in long-term memory.

What do you remember about Chernobyl? A new test of memory for media-mediated events

Abstract.We devised a new test for assessing remote memory for media–mediated events, i.e. events that are reported by and known through the media. The test consists of a verbal questionnaire covering famous events that occurred over a long period of time, from 1976 to 2000, specifically designed for use with the Italian population. A free recall procedure was adopted which makes use of progressive cues. The test can be easily updated for inclusion of future events. Normative and testretest reliability data are presented. The test provides a new tool for assessing media–mediated memory whenever an extensive assessment of retrograde memory performance is required, both in normal people and in brain–damaged patients.

Whose face is this?: Italian norms of naming celebrities.

Naming celebrities from visual input (i.e., face presentation) was examined in 98 healthy participants. Normative data are provided both for a 12-and a 63-item test. The first one is a brief screening tool, while the latter is to be administered whenever a pathological performance turns out in the former. Age adversely affected both performances. In both tests the most frequent errors were no responses, followed by semantic errors. The study makes explicit reference to current serial models of familiar person processing and naming. Findings allow to complement previously reported testing procedures, with the specific aim of qualifying proper name anomia by identifying the cognitive locus of lesion.

On Which Abilities Are Category Fluency and Letter Fluency Grounded A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of 53 Alzheimer's Dementia Patients

Background/Aims: In Alzheimers dementia (AD), letter fluency is less impaired than category fluency. To check whether category fluency and letter fluency depend differently on semantics and attention, 53 mild AD patients were given animal and letter fluency tasks, two semantic tests (the Verbal Semantic Questionnaire and the BORB Association Match test), and two attentional tests (the Stroop Colour-Word Interference test and the Digit Cancellation test). Methods: We conducted a LISREL confirmatory factor analysis to check the extent to which category fluency and letter fluency tasks were related to semantics and attention, viewed as latent variables. Results: Both types of fluency tasks were related to the latent variable Semantics but not to the latent variable Attention. Conclusions: Our findings warn against interpreting the disproportionate impairment of AD patients on category and letter fluency as a contrast between semantics and attention.

Temporal gradients for media-mediated memory : Italian norms

AbstractTemporal gradient (TG), i.e., differential recall of recent and old memories, is a well known feature of amnesia. A recent study provided evidence of a classical TG for media–mediated events in elderly healthy people, showing that they recall remote events significantly better than recent ones, while a reverse TG, i.e., better recall of more recent events, was demonstrated in younger normal subjects. In the present study we present normative data which, using the same test, allow evaluation of TG in single cases and their qualification as classical or reverse. The normative procedure was also applied to a small sample of subjects with probable Alzheimer’s disease or mild cognitive impairment. Norms for TG may be helpful not only to assess healthy people’s performance, but also to judge any apparent TG in pathological subjects.