Signal-detection analysis of the WMS faces subtest: Results in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients

Abstract

About 30% of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) suffer from cognitive impairment and 10–15% suffer from frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Due to the patients’ reduced motor function, a neuropsychological assessment with a low motor demand can be an advantage when evaluating patients, aiding its application. The present work has studied the usefulness of the Faces subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale in 42 patients with ALS and 42 healthy volunteers applying Holdnack’s Two-High Threshold model. The ALS group performed significantly worse in immediate and delayed discriminability. With respect to the presence of cognitive impairment, it seemed to be independent of the indexes proposed by Holdnack and Delis. On the other hand, motor problems were associated with delayed recognition while behavior alterations were linked to problems with delayed discriminability. ALS patients do not express differences in the bias index, in line with other types of previously studied pathologies.

Keywords:

• Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
• dementia
• frontotemporal dementia
• memory