Picture Recognition Errors in the Differential Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Abstract. This article explores the possibility of differentiating between patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and patients with other kinds of dementia by focusing on false alarms (FAs) on a picture recognition task (PRT). In Study 1, we compared AD and non-AD patients on the PRT and found that FAs discriminate well between these groups. Study 2 served to improve the discriminatory power of the FA score on the picture recognition task by adding associated pairs. Here, too, the FA score differentiated well between AD and non-AD patients, though the discriminatory power did not improve. The findings suggest that AD patients show a liberal response bias. Taken together, these studies suggest that FAs in picture recognition are of major importance for the clinical diagnosis of AD.