This project examines associative memory (i.e., memory for the link or relation among different events or items) in patients with amnesia due to lesions of the medial temporal lobes or diencephalon. To date, studies of implicit and explicit memory in amnesia have focused largely on item memory. By providing an information processing analysis of amnesic patients' performance on tasks of associative memory, we hope to provide further insight into the nature of the memory processes that are impaired and preserved in amnesia. The first section of this proposal focuses on amnesics' implicit memory for novel associations. We propose to systematically investigate amnesics' performance across a range of implicit memory tasks in which new associative priming occurs at a perceptual and at a conceptual level, and in which associations are formed within-domain and across-domain. Comparison of amnesics' performance across these tasks will allow us to assess the validity of the notion that amnesia reflects a general deficit in relational memory. The second section of the proposal focuses on amnesics' explicit memory for novel associations. We evaluate whether amnesics' recognition memory for associative information is disproportionately impaired in comparison to their recognition memory for item information. We also examine whether amnesics are differentially impaired on associative memory tasks that vary in their underlying processing demands. These studies are aimed at assessing the validity of the notion that amnesics' impairment in associative recognition is due to a disproportionate impairment in recollection. Converging evidence from these two lines of study should provide important insights into the nature of associative memory and its status in amnesia. By specifying the nature of the memory processes that allow the establishment and retrieval of different forms of novel associations, this project will further our understanding of the form of memory that is critical for remembering relational information.
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