The comparison of Selective Attention Deficit in Dual Task Performance in Elderly Alzheimer Patients and Healthy Elderly Individuals Print

The purpose of this study was to compare selective attention deficit in elderly Alzheimer patients and healthy elderly individuals using the dual task. Therefore, 23 subjects (11 females and 12 males) age 62 to 81 years; 13 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 10 healthy elderly subjects (EHI) with normal cognitive function participated in this study. people with Alzheimer's disease. healthy people was selected through some neurologist identified Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire (SPMSQ). After obtaining the average number of correct counting of months of the year in both simple and difficult cognitive task the overall error (E) or Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), and variable error (VE) were calculated for the tracking task. Then each person performed 10 tasks simultaneously (under Dual-task) in both simple and difficult mode. Analysis of variance in cognitive tasks showed that there was a significant interaction between task difficulty and risk of AD (p< 0.05). In other words, drop in the average number of months counted from AD patients than in healthy elderly (EHI) was observed only in the difficult task (countdown months), indicating the mechanisms of memory loss in these patients. Also ANOVA results showed that level of difficulty on accuracy drop and consistency the tracking task at dual-task conditions was significant (p< 0.05), but AD disease effect not significant(p>0.05). In other words, at dual conditions of tracking task, accuracy and consistency of both groups was equally reduced, which was most prominent in difficult conditions. This decrease indicates increased interference at response level due to defects in the mechanisms of selective attention in dual cognitive and tracking tasks and both groups.