Verbal fluency in bilingual Alzheimer's disease patients

Studies have demonstrated that in verbal fluency tests monolingual AD patients show greater difficulties retrieving words under semantic conditions compared to phonemic. This study tried to determine whether this was reproduced in both languages of Spanish/English bilingual AD patients. Performance on verbal fluency was also compared to AD severity. A difference in performance was found based on language and on cue condition. An interaction between AD severity and cue condition was also found. Patients that were categorized as less severe produced more words under the semantic condition while those that were categorized as more severe did not show a difference between conditions suggesting a faster decline in semantic verbal fluency tests. Furthermore, this pattern was produced in both languages.