The use of organizational principles in naming generation: its relation to time-dependency in normal elderly and Alzheimer patients

Nineteen elderly—ten healthy and nine Alzheimer patients—were given a naming-generation task. Their responses were analyzed according to word-type and inter-word relatedness. The results were correlated with the Mini-Mental-State Examination (MMSE) and examined to elucidate time-dependency. In healthy subjects it was found that time-dependency exists for the number of new words and for percent of phonetically-related words, while for Alzheimer patients, time-dependency was exhibited in new words only. Results are discussed in terms of the principles of semantic-memory organization and time-dependency of cognitive-linguistic functions.