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Counterfactual cognitive deficit in persons with Parkinson's disease
- Source :
- Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry. 74:1065-1070
- Publication Year :
- 2003
- Publisher :
- BMJ, 2003.
-
Abstract
- Background: Counterfactuals are mental representations of alternatives to past events. Recent research has shown them to be important for other cognitive processes, such as planning, causal reasoning, problem solving, and decision making—all processes independently linked to the frontal lobes. Objective: To test the hypothesis that counterfactual thinking is impaired in some patients with Parkinson’s disease and is linked to frontal dysfunction in these patients. Methods. Measures of counterfactual processing and frontal lobe functioning were administered to 24 persons with Parkinson’s disease and 15 age matched healthy controls. Results. Patients with Parkinson’s disease spontaneously generated significantly fewer counterfactuals than controls despite showing no differences from controls on a semantic fluency test; they also performed at chance levels on a counterfactual inference test, while age matched controls performed above chance levels on this test. Performance on both the counterfactual generation and inference tests correlated significantly with performance on two tests traditionally linked to frontal lobe functioning (Stroop colour–word interference and Tower of London planning tasks) and one test of pragmatic social communication skills. Conclusions: Counterfactual thinking is impaired in Parkinson’s disease. This impairment may be related to frontal lobe dysfunction.
- Subjects :
- Male
Paper
Counterfactual thinking
medicine.medical_specialty
Counterfactual conditional
Psychometrics
Concept Formation
Decision Making
Neuropsychological Tests
Audiology
Developmental psychology
Life Change Events
medicine
Humans
Dementia
Problem Solving
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
medicine.diagnostic_test
Cognitive disorder
Reproducibility of Results
Parkinson Disease
Cognition
Neuropsychological test
Middle Aged
medicine.disease
Frontal Lobe
Psychiatry and Mental health
Frontal lobe
Mental Recall
Imagination
Female
Surgery
Neurology (clinical)
Cognition Disorders
Psychology
Stroop effect
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 00223050
- Volume :
- 74
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....b82814b07b94453962f3e2b484587638