SPATIAL LOCATION MEMORY IN AMNESIA - BINDING ITEM AND LOCATION INFORMATION UNDER INCIDENTAL AND INTENTIONAL ENCODING CONDITIONS

Items located within an array were presented to alcoholic Korsakoff an d nonalcoholic mixed-etiology amnesics and to alcoholic and normal con trols. Recognition memory for the locations of items was tested after incidental and intentional encoding. When equated on item recognition, neither Korsakoff amnesics nor alcoholic controls benefited from inte ntional, relative to incidental, encoding instructions. Furthermore, K orsakoff amnesics showed neither disproportionately impaired incidenta l nor intentional location recognition memory relative to alcoholic co ntrols. In contrast, mixed-etiology amnesics profited significantly fr om intentional location acquisition relative to incidental instruction s, and were impaired somewhat in incidental, but not intentional, loca tion memory relative to normal controls. We discuss these data in rela tion to Mayes' (1992) contextual memory deficit hypothesis and Hirst's (1982) automatic encoding deficit account, and propose an alternative framework in which the location memory deficit observed in mixed-etio logy amnesics is interpreted as a disruption to the ability to bind it em and location information.