Impaired lexical access for unique entities in individuals with subjective cognitive decline

Abstract

Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) may serve as an early indicator of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, accurately quantifying cognitive impairment in SCD is challenging, mainly because existing assessment tools lack sensitivity. This study examined how tasks specifically designed to assess knowledge of famous people, could potentially aid in identifying cognitive impairment in SCD. A total of 60 adults with SCD and 60 healthy controls (HCs) aged 50 to 82 years performed a famous people verbal fluency task and a famous people naming task. In the famous people fluency task, the results showed that the individuals with SCD produced significantly fewer famous names in the total time allowed than the HCs, and this difference was also found in the first and the second time interval. In the famous people naming task, the performance of the SCD group was significantly lower than that of the HC group only in the more recent period of fame. Overall, these results suggest that retrieving the names of famous people was more difficult for people with SCD than for people without cognitive complaints. They also suggest that famous people verbal fluency and naming tasks could be useful in detecting cognitive decline at the preclinical stage of AD.