Compared with early-stage dementia, early impairment in Alzheimer’s-type dementia more prominently involves

• A. Social pragmatics
• B. Executive function
• C. Short-term memory
• D. Long-term memory

Answer: (C)

Alzheimer’s-type dementia first disrupts how new information is learned and retained. This comes from early degeneration in the hippocampus and nearby medial temporal structures, which govern episodic memory encoding and consolidation. As a result, people have prominent trouble forming new memories and remembering recent events, even in the early stages. In contrast, long-term memories from the distant past are often still accessible early on, so long-term memory isn’t as severely affected at first. While other areas like social understanding or planning can decline, they aren’t the hallmark feature early in Alzheimer’s. So the most prominent early impairment is short-term memory for recent experiences and new information.