Learning conditional relations in elderly people with and without neurocognitive disorders.

Abstract

Elderly people with neurocognitive disorders (NCDs) present difficulties in learning and maintaining arbitrary conditional relations between stimuli. The aims of Study 1 were to (a) verify the efficacy of a procedure of teaching conditional relations by exclusion in elderly people with and without NCDs and (b) determine the presence or absence of the formation of equivalence classes based on this procedure. Five elderly people without NCDs (control group [CG]) and 6 elderly women with NCDs (experimental group [EG]) underwent a teaching-by-exclusion procedure (linear structure) with 4 classes of stimuli with 5 stimuli each (dictated names of people, photographs, written names, degrees of relatedness, and profession). The formation of equivalence classes was then tested. All of the participants in the CG learned the conditional relations, and 3 of the 5 formed equivalence classes. However, none of the participants in the EG learned the AB relations, despite demonstrating performance by exclusion. The aim of Study 2 was to determine the efficacy of a procedure that combined teaching by exclusion and the delayed-cue procedure to teach arbitrary relations to elderly people with NCDs. Four elderly women with NCDs underwent a teaching procedure (one-to-many structure) with 3 classes with 3 visual stimuli each (photographs, written names, and names of professions). All of the participants learned the conditional relations, and 2 named some of the photographs that were presented. The procedure effectively taught arbitrary relations and may be promising for studying intervention procedures in elderly people with NCDs.