Abstract
Background: We investigated the ability of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) to shift between different self-images. Methods: We developed an original task (shifting-self task) in which we invited 28 patients with AD and 30 control participants to generate "who am I" statements that describe 2 alternative self-images (ie, physical-self vs psychological-self). In a control task, participants had to generate 2 blocks of "who am I" statements (ie, physical-self block and psychological-self block). Results: Analyses showed longer completion time in both the shifting-self and control task in patients with AD than in control participants. Completion time on the shifting-self task was longer than that on the control task in patients with AD, suggesting a shifting cost in AD. Conclusion: We propose that one feature of the diminished sense of self in AD is the difficulty of patients to shift between different alternating self-images.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1-8 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias |
| Volume | 35 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2020 |
Open Access - Access Right Statement
Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage)Keywords
- Alzheimer's disease
- self, perception