Browsing by discipline "Neuropsykologia"

The relationship between cognition and functional capability is an important research topic as it concerns the ecological validity of clinical neuropsychology. The purpose of this thesis was to explore the relationship between executive functioning and functional capability in very mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. A further goal was to investigate the effect of dementia severity on the relationship between executive functioning and functional capability. The study sample consisted of relatively aged individuals (mean age 83.53 years), which is meritable, since very few analogous studies have been conducted with as old a sample. The sample of this study consisted of Alzheimer's disease patients who participated in an intervention study involving elderly dementia patients by Helsinki University Central Hospital during 2014–2016. Baseline measurements of the study were used. The sample (n=97) was split into very mild/mild (n=55) and moderate (n=42) Alzheimer's disease using the Clinical Dementia Rating scale (CDR). Executive functioning and functional capability were measured using the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) and Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study–Activities of Daily Living (ADCS-ADL), respectively. The relationship between executive functioning and fuctional capability was measured using regression analysis. In this study the relationship between executive functioning and functional capability could not be replicated. Furthermore, dementia severity was found to have no effect on the relationship between executive functioning and functional capability. There might have been notable dementia comorbidity, physical morbidity and old age fragility within the sample which have had an impact on the results. Moreover, functional capability was conceptualized using only the total score of the ADL measure. In the future functional capability should be measured more minutely, inspecting the individual items of the selected ADL measure.