| The team, which also included members from Abertay and St Andrews universities, tested seven people with the condition and seven who are healthy to find out how their responses differed.
They were all asked to give definitions for 32 common words.
Lead researcher Professor Trevor Harley explained, “We asked patients to define simple words, for example monkey, salmon or tractor. People with dementia are notoriously bad at this sort of task.
“At first sight it looks like they’ve lost most of the detailed knowledge of the word. For example, the only thing they appear to know about a monkey might just be that it’s an animal.
“The assumption has been that Alzheimer’s disease causes this knowledge to be destroyed. However, we found that if you probe the patient in the right way with appropriate questions that support them to search their stored knowledge, they can often generate more detailed information.”
The researchers reckon the poor performance by sufferers at first may simply be because they are struggling to understand what is being asked.
Their findings, published in the journal Aphasiology, could mean the actual loss of knowledge may be happening later in the progression of the disease than had been thought.
“The implications of this research are significant,” said Professor Harley.
“Quite often when people with dementia seem unable to remember something, they might still know it, and you might be able to help them remember it if you phrase the questions in the right way.” |
