Verbal Fluency in Bilingual Spanish/English Alzheimer’s Disease Patients

Author(s)

Judy Salvatierra
Monica Rosselli
Amarilis Cruz Acevedo, Nova Southeastern UniversityFollow
Ranjan Duara, University of South FloridaFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2007

Publication Title

American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias

Volume

22

Issue/Number

3

First Page

190

ISSN

1533-3175

Last Page

201

Abstract/Excerpt

Studies have demonstrated that in verbal fluency tests, monolinguals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) show greater difficulties retrieving words based on semantic rather than phonemic rules. The present study aimed to determine whether this difficulty was reproduced in both languages of Spanish/English bilinguals with mild to moderate AD whose primary language was Spanish. Performance on semantic and phonemic verbal fluency of 11 bilingual AD patients was compared to the performance of 11 cognitively normal, elderly bilingual individuals matched for gender, age, level of education, and degree of bilingualism. Cognitively normal subjects retrieved significantly more items under the semantic condition compared to the phonemic, whereas the performance of AD patients was similar under both conditions, suggesting greater decline in semantic verbal fluency tests. This pattern was produced in both languages, implying a related semantic decline in both languages. Results from this study should be considered preliminary because of the small sample size.

DOI

10.1177/1533317507301792

NSUWorks Citation

Salvatierra, J., Rosselli, M., Acevedo, A. C., Duara, R. (2007). Verbal Fluency in Bilingual Spanish/English Alzheimer’s Disease Patients. American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias, 22(3), 190-201.
Available at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cps_facarticles/125