Abstract
Word fluency ability in two different categories (phonological and semantic) was studied in patients with mild to moderate dementia : Alzheimer type dementia (52 patients), multi-infarct dementia (41 patients) and other types of dementia (7 patients). The major results included the following : (1) The dementia group retrieved significantly fewer words than the control group in both phonological and semantic categories and the number of retrieved words decreased significantly as the severity of dementia progressed. (2) While the control group retrieved more words from the semantic category than from phonological category, the performance of the dementia group showed a reversal of the pattern of the control group. (3) On the other hand, basically the same patterns of performance between the control and dementia groups occurred in the frequency with which given words were retrieved and the kinds of words retrieved in both phonological and semantic categories. Results (1) and (2) taken together indicate the structural and functional alteration of semantic memory in the dementia patients. On the other hand, the result (3) suggests that the maior words in a given category tend to be retrieved more frequently than the minor words even in the dementia patients who have an altered semantic memory as well as in the control group.
