Skip to main content
. 2017 Sep 27;4(11):835–840. doi: 10.1002/acn3.471

Table 1.

General and behavioral test performance characteristics in the participant groups

Characteristic Session Healthy controls AD Group comparison
Statistic P‐value
General
Gender (M:F) NA 11:6 9:8 χ 2 = 0.49 0.486
Age (years) NA 66.6 (7.3) 71.8 (8.2) t = 1.93 0.062
Handedness (R:L) NA 16:1 17:0 NA NA
Education (years) NA 16.5 (1.8) 15.6 (2.6) t = −1.13 0.267
MMSE (/30) NA 29.9 (0.2) 23.9 (3.3) z = −4.99 <0.001
Symptom duration (years) NA NA 4.5 (2.7) NA NA
Donepezil duration (months) NA NA 20.8 (13.1) NA NA
Antidepressant therapy (no.)a NA 2 2 NA NA
Behavioral tests
General cognitive
RMT Faces (/25): baseline 24.4 (0.9) 19.7 (3.6)b z = −3.61 <0.001
change 0.3 (1.0) 0.0 (3.3) z = 0.89 0.375
RMT Words (/25) baseline 24.4 (1.5) 18.0 (3.4)b z = −4.55 <0.001
change −0.1 (0.8) 0.4 (3.1) z = 0.77 0.443
GNT (/30) baseline 25.5 (3.6) 14.1 (8.3) z = −4.18 <0.001
change 0.8 (1.5) −0.6 (2.5) z = −1.81 0.071
WASI matrices (/32) baseline 25.5 (4.0) 11.6 (6.8) z = −4.42 <0.001
change 1.2 (2.7) −0.6 (3.4) z = −1.40 0.163
BPVS (/51) baseline 49.1 (1.7) 40.4 (10.1)b z = −4.00 <0.001
change −0.5 (1.2) 0.6 (2.3) z = 2.09 0.038
Sinewave speech experiment
Sinewave speech (/20) baseline 15.4 (2.5) 10.3 (5.1) z = −3.40 <0.001
repeat 16.3 (2.7) 13.9 (3.7) z = −1.82 0.069
change 0.9 (3.1) 3.6 (3.7)c t = −2.36 0.025
Session change scored baseline 2.0 (1.5) 2.7 (2.8) t = −0.91 0.369
repeat 2.4 (2.1) 2.5 (1.4) t = −0.19 0.849
change 0.4 (2.2) −0.2 (3.3) t = 0.61 0.544
Clear speech control (/10) baseline 10.0 (0.0) 9.9 (0.2) NA NA
repeat 10.0 (0.0) 10.0 (0.0) NA NA

The Table shows mean (standard deviation) general demographic, clinical, and behavioral test data in the healthy control group and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patient group; comparisons between groups are also indicated. All AD patients were established on a standard daily 10 mg dose of donepezil at the time of participation; the baseline session was conducted prior to their next, intersession dose of donepezil. The interval between test sessions was similar for each group (healthy controls, 4.8 ± 0.4 h; AD, 4.9 ± 0.4 h; t 32 = −0.85, P = 0.400). The right‐hand columns show the effect of statistical comparisons between participant groups for each test. Maximum scores for standard tests of neuropsychological functions and for tests in the speech experiment (spoken numbers presented in sinewave form and in clear) are indicated in parentheses (see text and Fig. 1 for details). AD, Alzheimer's disease; BPVS, British Picture Vocabulary Scale (Dunn & Whetton, 1982); F, female; GNT, Graded Naming Test (McKenna & Warrington, 1980); L, left; M, male; MMSE, Mini‐Mental State Examination score; NA, not applicable; R, right; RMT, Recognition Memory Test (Warrington, 1984); WASI, Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (Wechsler, 1999).

a

no participant was taking memantine or other psychoactive agents;

b

one AD patient did not complete the test due to lack of time;

c

significant between‐session performance difference within group (P < 0.001);

d

index of intrinsic perceptual learning of sinewave speech (score on second 10 trials minus score on first 10 trials, within that session; see text and Figure 2).