The Impact of Dementia on the Self: Do We Consider Ourselves the Same as Others?

AbstractThe decline in autobiographical memory function in people with Alzheimer ’s dementia (AD) has been argued to cause a loss of self-identity. Prior research suggests that people perceive changes in moral traits and loss of memories with a “social-moral core” as most impactful to the maintenance of identity. However, such research has so far asked people to rate from a third-person perspective, considering the extent to which hypothetical others maintain their identity in the face of various impairments. In the current study, we examined the impact of perspective, comparing first- and third-person perspectives, as well as memory type. This online study asked 201 participants to consider hypothetical scenarios in which either themselves or another person (their parent, partner, or a stranger) experienced different types of memory failures associated with a diagnosis of AD. For each scenario, participants rated the degree to which the depicted individual rem ained the same person, and how impactful the impairment was. Social semantic memory failures – involving failures to recognise a loved one – were rated as most detrimental to self-continuity, and procedural memory failures the least. Averaged across all memory types, people considered their own and their partner’s self-continuity to be more resilient to memory failures than that of a parent or stranger. However, this pattern was reversed for some memory types: forgetting semantic or episodic information abo...
Source: Neuroethics - Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research