A Case study by Jessica A. Hehman, Tim P. German,
and Stanley B. Klein
Department of Psychology, University of California,
Santa Barbara 2005
A Presentation by Amarallys Cintron
Stages of Alzheimer’s
Stage
Characteristics
Initial Stage
Mild forgetfulness
Early Stage
Increase word-finding problems, decline in
spatial memory
Intermediate Stage
Late Stage
End Stage
General cognitive deficits in reasoning and
judgment; help needed in common daily
tasks
Person may not recognize family
members, loss of communicative skills;
Death
Sense of Self
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Patients with late stage Alzheimer’s demonstrate
a loss of sense of self
Late stage patients exhibit a decline in use of
personal pronouns and changes in the content of
self–narratives
A late stage patient from a previous study, K.R.
could correctly identify her personality
characteristics although they were “out of date”
Objective


To determine the effects of Alzheimer’s
disease on the concept of one’s self
Hypothesis:
Alzheimer’s disease entails a
gradual breakdown in the mechanisms used
to acquire and update personal knowledge
Participant


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P.H.
83 year old woman
Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1996
Otherwise in good health and under the
treatment of Aricept
P.H. was given the Mini Mental State Exam
and got a score of 7. A score of 22 or less is
considered “definitely abnormal” for her age
group.
Experiment


Photos of P.H. are categorized by decade
from her 20s to her 70s
She asked if she recognized the person in
the photo, then she was asked to identify
the person and give information about the
picture
Results


Pictures from her 20s and 30s were correctly
identified seven out of eight times
Pictures from her 40s to 70s were correctly
identified only twice out of 20 times
What does this tell us?


Alzheimer’s disease may degrade self
memory in such a way as to leave remnants
of earlier representational states including
personality and one’s appearance.
This could prove that Alzheimer’s disease
impairs routines that update assorted
databases of self–related knowledge
What could cause this?


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It is proposed that Alzheimer’s may cause a
temporally graded breakdown in semantic self
knowledge
This can account both for patient K.R.’s inability to
update her semantic self–knowledge for personality
changes taking place
Also accounts for patient P.H.’s problems
recognizing herself from pictures taken during the
later decades of her life.
What is unknown?


Could this gradual breakdown caused by
Alzheimer’s be treatable?
Would this breakdown preserve all self
memories in the earlier decades of life or just
some?
Questions?