Etude des liens thématiques et taxonomiques, ainsi que des processus de recollection et de familiarité dans la maladie d'Alzheimer via l'utilisation de l'illusion mnésique de Jacoby et Whitehouse

This research explored the interactions between semantic and episodic memory in early-stage Alzheimer’s disease (AD) using a protocol inspired by the Jacoby and Whitehouse (1989) memory illusion, combined with a remember/know/guess (R/K/G) procedure (Tulving, 1985; Gardiner, 1988). This task allowed the investigation of the effects of early-stage AD on thematic and taxonomic links, as well as recollection and familiarity processes. The research is based on two main hypotheses. First, AD patients, compared to healthy controls, are expected to produce more false alarms in response to taxonomic or perceptual priming, reflecting an early degradation of taxonomic links. Second, AD patients are hypothesized to exhibit deficits in familiarity processes, resulting in fewer correct recognitions based on familiarity across all priming categories. The study involved a sample of early-stage AD patients and healthy controls. The experimental protocol (Invernizzi, 2020; Demonty, 2020) presented participants with a word list to memorize and subsequently recognize. During the recognition phase, each item was preceded by a 33 ms prime that was either related or unrelated to the target word, under three conditions (thematic, taxonomic, perceptual). Recognized items were categorized using the R/K/G procedure, distinguishing recollection-based responses, familiarity-based responses, and random guesses. The results highlight an early degradation of recollection processes in early-stage AD, while familiarity processes remain preserved. However, the study did not provide evidence for the early degradation of taxonomic links. Nonetheless, semantic priming increased the number of correct recognitions in AD patients, underscoring the value of this paradigm for studying early memory changes in Alzheimer’s disease.