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Monday, September 12, 2005Andy Ellis and colleagues at the University of Leeds in England say commonly used words are learned between a child's first and fifth years of life. The less commonly used words, such as zebra and giraffe, are learned a few years later during elementary school. And these less frequently used words are the first to disappear because of Alzheimer's. Ellis said vocabulary shrinks in the early stages of the disease. The fast test -- making lists in a minute -- can help identify people in the early stages. His team recruited 96 people with Alzheimer's and 40 age-matched healthy volunteers. Those whose memory systems were intact spewed an average of 33 words a minute, compared with an average of 15 in patients with early Alzheimer's. The range was from four to 33 among Alzheimer's patients and 16 to 52 in normal volunteers. Those ranges overlap quite a bit, calling into question the validity of the test. And, as another expert tells the paper in the last paragraph, the over-educated are going to do better than the undereducated whether or not they have Alzheimer's. It's a safe bet that the Sunday Times Crossword Puzzle fanatics will, too. posted by Sydney on 9/12/2005 08:09:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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