Abstract

It is exceedingly rare to find studies that analyze the effect of gender differences in executive-function tasks in normal cognitive aging, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's Disease (AD). The objective of the present study was to analyze the mean differences in performance in four executive-function tasks, the Clock Drawing Test verbal-command, Clock Drawing Test-copy, Phonetic Fluency Test and Trail Making Test-A, according to the gender and impairment group variables. A total of 90 participants (30 patients with Alzheimer's Disease, 30 patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment, and 30 healthy elderly participants; 50% men and 50% women in each group) took part in the study. As expected, the results showed a main effect of the group in most tasks, with a progressively worse performance according to cognitive impairment. Regarding the effect of gender, there were no significant differences in the Mild Cognitive Impairment and healthy elderly groups, but a significantly higher performance of women compared to men was found in the Alzheimer's group. The clinical and theoretical implications of these results are discussed. In particular, the abnormal performance of women with Alzheimer's in the sample may be related to a possible cognitive reserve due to social and educational background in their sociocultural and generational context.

摘要

很少有研究分析性别差异对正常认知衰老、轻度认知障碍 (MCI) 和阿尔茨海默病 (AD) 执行功能任务的影响。本研究的目的是根据性别和性别，分析四项执行功能任务（时钟绘图测试口头命令、时钟绘图测试副本、语音流畅性测试和轨迹制作测试 A）的平均差异。损伤组变量。共有 90 名参与者（30 名阿尔茨海默病患者、30 名轻度认知障碍患者和 30 名健康老年人；每组 50% 男性和 50% 女性）参加了这项研究。正如预期的那样，结果显示该小组在大多数任务中发挥了主要作用，根据认知障碍，表现逐渐变差。关于性别的影响，轻度认知障碍组和健康老年人组没有显着差异，但阿尔茨海默氏症组中女性的表现明显高于男性。讨论了这些结果的临床和理论意义。特别是，样本中患有阿尔茨海默氏症的女性的异常表现可能与由于其社会文化和代际背景中的社会和教育背景而可能存在的认知储备有关。