Repeated presentation of a word list in a consistent order increases differences in total words recalled between those with and without Alzheimer's disease.

objectiveIndividuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are known to have difficulty utilizing semantic strategy to remember items from a list, such as during word list recall tasks. However, it is unclear if presenting words in the same order as compared to shuffling across trials of a list-learning test confers an advantage in terms of word recall in individuals with AD.

methodTo address this issue, we leveraged data from 10,504 participants over five studies across four AD Research Centers that administered the Consortium to Establish a Registry for AD Word List Memory Test in either a standard sequence (shuffled words for each learning trial) or nonstandard sequence (unshuffled words in a consistent order for each learning trial).

resultsAfter controlling for gender, age, years of education, apolipoprotein E gene, Clinical Dementia Rating Global Score, and composite test scores for executive functioning and language comprehension, we found that differences in word recall performance between participants with and without probable AD were larger when they were tested with the unshuffled versus standard shuffled version of the word list.

conclusionsWhen administered the unshuffled Consortium to Establish a Registry for AD Word List, participants without AD demonstrated a larger recall advantage compared to those with probable AD. This advantage was higher on Trial 3 (β = 0.09) compared to Trial 2 (β = 0.04), suggesting that this advantage increases with multiple immediate repetitions. Using an unshuffled word list may enhance the ability to distinguish between individuals along the AD continuum. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).