Mechanism of the Closing-in Phenomenon in a Figure Copying Task in Alzheimer’s Disease Patients

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Abstract
The “closing-in phenomenon” in figure copying tasks refers to a tendency to copy near the target, or to overlap the target to be copied. The mechanisms underlying the closing-in phenomenon have not been fully elucidated. We posit that closing-in may be related to the patients’ compensatory strategies to overcome visuospatial dysfunction or visuospatial working memory deficit. Thus, it is expected that as the complexity of the target figure or the distance from the target to the copying space is increased, the magnitude of closing-in will be increased. Thirteen patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) who demonstrated closing-in on a screening test and 15 healthy controls participated in this study. Each subject copied figures in conditions that varied in terms of figure complexity and distance from the target to the copying space. Neither figure complexity nor distance between the target and copying space affected the degree of closing-in in normal subjects. In contrast, in AD patients, the magnitude of closing-in increased as a function of figure complexity; however closing-in was unchanged by varying the distance from the target to the copying space. Our results suggest that copying near the target figure might be the patients’ strategy to compensate for their visuospatial dysfunction or visuospatial working memory deficits.

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