Abstract

Background: Stroop ColorWord Test (SCWT) is often adopted to evaluate processing of cognitive function or interference. This study addressed whether different indices of Stroop interference (SI) significantly distinguished Chinese-speaking Alzheimer's disease (AD) persons fromcontrol counterparts, and whether SCWT interference errors changed in AD persons of different severity.

Methods: Forty native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, including 20 AD persons and 20 controls, participated in this study. All of the participants took SCWT, and their performance was computed for eight SI indices. Different conditions, response types, and AD errors were also examined.

Results: Our findings revealed significant group differences in terms of raw scores, response types, and most SI scores. We additionally contributed to SCWT performance by AD persons of different severity. SCWT performance of very mild AD persons was slightly impaired in the incongruous condition, while the mildly-demented persons were more severely impaired in all of the conditions.

Conclusion: SI indices in the current study are proven to be helpful in distinguishing AD persons from controls. Moreover, dementia exerts a certain impact on AD SCWT performance. It is thus suggested that AD persons be given help with appropriate application of SCWT, and that SCWT interference errors be adopted as a diagnostic tool in future treatment.