Affiliation:
1. Laboratory of aging and neuropsychological disorder, Department of Psychology, Federal University of Paraiba, João Pessoa, Brazil
2. Department of Basic Psychology, Psychobiology and Methodology of Behavioral Sciences, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
3. Department of Psychology, Università of Campania 'Luigi Vanvitelli', Caserta, Italy
Abstract
Abstract
Objective
The aim of this study was to investigate whether different types of visuoconstructional abilities are useful to distinguish individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) from healthy controls (HCs).
Method
We selected 20 patients with MCI and 14 with AD diagnosis based on standard criteria. The neuropsychological performance of MCI and AD groups were compared with that of a group of 11 HCs using a standard neuropsychological battery and visuoconstructional tasks that differed difficulty and type of implicated skills (graphomotor vs. non-graphomotor): two-dimensional (Clock Drawing Test, CDT; Block Design, BD; and Visual Puzzles, VP) and three-dimensional Block Construction (TBC).
Results
AD group scored significantly lower than HCs in BD, VP and TBC tasks, but no significant differences were found between HCs and MCI. CDT (copy condition) scores did not differ significantly among the groups. The receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that BD [sensitivity (se) = .85, specificity (sp) = .90, Youden index (J) = .76], VP (se = .78 and sp = .72, J = .51) and TBC (se = .71, sp = 100, J = .71) were accurate tasks to discriminate between AD and HCs. Moreover, BD tasks (se = .85, sp = .70, J = .55) and TBC (se = .71, sp = .80, J = .51) showed fair accuracy to differentiate between MCI and AD groups.
Conclusions
These findings indicate that non-graphomotor visuoconstructional tasks are already impaired in the early stages of AD, but are preserved in MCI individuals when compared with HCs.
Funder
Brazilian Federal Agency for the Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education
Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Subject
Psychiatry and Mental health,Clinical Psychology,Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology,General Medicine
Cited by
2 articles.
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