Performance of a sample of patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and healthy elderly on a lexical decision test (LDT) as a measure of pre-morbid intelligence

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to describe the performance of healthy elderly patients with aging-related pathologies (MCI) and patients with AD on a lexical decision test. METHODS: The study included 38 healthy elderly subjects, 61 MCI and 26 AD patients from the Neurology Department of the Hospital das Clinicas, Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology Group. The neuropsychological instruments included the episodic memory test (RAVLT), subtests from the WAIS-III (Matrix Reasoning and Vocabulary) to determine estimated IQ, the Boston naming test (BNT) and Lexical Decision Test (LDT). RESULTS: All groups differed on the MMSE, as expected according to their pathologies, memory tests, naming and estimated IQ. For the vocabulary and the LDT – measures of crystalized intelligence no differences were found. CONCLUSION: The LDT demonstrated that lexical decision can be used as a measure of pre-morbid IQ among the individuals assessed in a Brazilian sample.