NO SELECTIVE DEFICIT IN RECALL IN AMNESIA

Are amnesic patients selectively impaired in recall relative to recogn ition? Experiment 1 studied a group of Korsakoff amnesics and matched the amnesic level of recognition with that of control subjects by test ing control recognition of unrelated words after longer delays. It was found that under these conditions the observed levels of recall were also approximately equal. In Experiment 2, a similar result occurred w hen the Korsakoff amnesic level of recognition for unrelated words was matched by varying the number of presentations as well as delay befor e testing. In Experiment 3, a similar result occurred again with a gro up of amnesics of mixed aetiology and recognition levels for related w ords matched by varying the duration of presentation and delay before testing. In this experiment, both recognition and recall of the same i tems were assessed. It was found that for the amnesic group the observ ed level of dependency between recognition and recall was less than th at for the control group. One possible interpretation of this result i s that the microstructure of the recall process may be selectively dis turbed in amnesia. The principal finding, however, is that in all thre e experiments there was no significant evidence of the existence in am nesia of a selective deficit in the overall level of recall relative t o that of recognition.