Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Verbal fluency tasks are frequently used in clinical settings as a measure of cognitive performance. Participants are given one minute to produce as many words as possible either starting with a particular letter, such as C, F or L, or belonging to a specific category, such as animals. Troyer, Moscovitch, and Winocur (1997) proposed that verbal fluency performance can be divided into clustering, defined as the production of words within a specific subcategory, and switching, defined as the ability to shift between clusters. Support for this model has been found through studies of the normal aging process (Lanting et al., in press), and with individuals with brain lesions (Troyer et al., 1998), or diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (Troster et al., 1998; Troyer et al., 1997). However these studies have resulted in inconsistencies and alternative ways of scoring these variables have been proposed (Lanting et al, in press). Performance has not been examined over the course of decline of Alzheimer's disease or in other dementias. In the current proposed project performance on verbal fluency tasks will be used to examine cognitive differences with age and dementia diagnosis. First these variables will be examined in healthy individuals from young, middle and older age groups, furthering our understanding of healthy aging, which can then be compared to the effects of dementia. Next, the performance of individuals with Alzheimer's disease will be examined in the early stages and later stages of the disease, which will provide information on how this disease progresses. The final component of this project will compare verbal fluency measures in additional subtypes of dementia. This comparison could provide a method of differentiating between dementia subtypes based on these variables. More accurate diagnostic procedures will assist with early detection measures, which are important when implementing treatment or intervention procedures.