Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
Alzheimer's disease--Patients; Alzheimer's disease--Patients; Anosognosia; Memory in old age;
Abstract
Past research has documented the presence of frontal lobe dysfunction in both dementia of the Alzheimer's Type (DAT) and normal aging. The purpose of the present study was to further investigate whether one particular type of frontal lobe dysfunction, unawareness of deficits or anosognosia, differs qualitatively or quantitatively when occurring in DAT versus the normal aging process. Anosognosia was investigated in three groups of subjects: individuals diagnosed with DAT (N = 25), older normal controls (N = 25), and middle-aged normal controls (N = 25). Unawareness of deficits was operationalized as the discrepancy between subjects' self-rating and that of another rater who was familiar with the subject's abilities in: remote memory, recent memory, attention, and everyday activities. In addition, subjects' predicted versus actual performance on the fifth trial of the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT) served as a measure of unawareness of deficits in recent memory. As hypothesized, DAT patients rated their abilities in each of the four domains as significantly better than did their family members/caregivers. Conversely, the older and middle-aged controls rated their abilities as worse than did their family members; however, this finding varied as a function of the specific ability assessed. In addition, DAT patients substantially overestimated their memory abilities relative to their actual performance on the CVLT, while both older and middle-aged controls underestimated their memory abilities. Results from both measures of unawareness support the hypothesis that unawareness of deficits in DAT is qualitatively different from the frontal lobe dysfunction seen in the normal aging process. Although some frontal lobe dysfunction appears related to the aging process, anosognosia does not appear to be part of this process. The implications and limitations of this study and directions for future research were discussed.
Year of Submission
1998
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Department of Psychology
First Advisor
Jane Wong
Second Advisor
Beverly Kopper
Third Advisor
Julia Wallace
Date Original
1998
Object Description
1 PDF file (88 leaves)
Copyright
©1998 Jay D. Anderson
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Anderson, Jay D., "Awareness of Deficits in Dementia of the Alzheimer’s Type and Normal Aging" (1998). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 1939.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/1939
Comments
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