Understanding the neurological bases of normal memory processes is a fundamental issue in memory research. In the proposed research, a neuropsychological approach to this issue is taken: in order to learn about memory and the brain, the memory deficits of patients with organic amnesia will be studied.
The specific aim of the study is to test the hypothesis that the memory deficits exhibited by patients with amnesia are rooted in an impairment in the ability to store associations that allow the components of an episode to be organized into a unique, retrievable unit. The proposed experiments will examine how the formation of organizing associations at study affects the memory performance of amnesic patients and control subjects. Three sets of experiments are proposed. Each set of experiments will examine how memory performance is affected by the degree to which organization is promoted at study. In all three sets of experiments, both implicit and explicit tests of memory will be used. The first set of experiments will use categorized lists in order to examine organization based on semantic relationships. The second set of experiments will examine the storage of serial associations within lists of unrelated words. The third set of experiments will establish a situation in which effective organization at study should conflict with good performance at test. According to the present hypothesis, such a situation should give amnesic patients, who are hypothesized to have a deficit in the storage of organizing associations, an advantage over control subjects.
