Is verbal recognition memory really different in Huntington's and Alzheimer's disease?

Abstract

Verbal recall and recognition were examined in Huntington's disease (HD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. Subgroups of HD and AD patients were matched for overall severity of dementia. Subjects were administered the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test, a list-learning task with three free-recall trials followed immediately by one yes/no recognition trial with semantically related and unrelated distractors. The matched AD and HD groups did not differ in the number of words recalled, although the HD patients showed slightly greater improvement over trials. Recognition performance was evaluated with measures of accuracy and response bias that are independent of each other. The matched groups did not differ in overall recognition accuracy, but the AD patients tended to have a more liberal ("yea-saying") response bias than did the HD patients. In addition, only the AD patients were differentially enticed to false-positive responding by semantically related distractors. The results suggest that the rule for making decisions when uncertain, rather than memory strength per se, distinguishes the recognition memory performance of AD and HD patients.