Working memory and the enactment effect in early Alzheimer’s disease

This study examines the enactment effect in early Alzheimer’s disease using a novel working memory task. Free recall of action-object instruction sequences was measured in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (n=14) and older adult controls (n=15). Instruction sequences were read out loud by the experimenter (verbal-only task), or read by the experimenter and performed by the participants (subject-performed task). In both groups and for all sequence lengths, recall was superior in the subject-performed condition than the verbal-only condition. Individuals with Alzheimer’s disease showed a deficit in free recall of recently learned instruction sequences relative to older adult controls, yet both groups show a significant benefit from performing actions themselves at encoding. The subject-performed task shows promise as a tool to improve working memory in early Alzheimer’s disease.