INTACT PRIMARY MEMORY IN MILD-TO-MODERATE ALZHEIMER-DISEASE - INDEXESFROM THE CALIFORNIA VERBAL-LEARNING TEST

The California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT; Delis, Kramer, Kaplan, and Ober, 1987) was administered to patients with mild to moderate Alzheim er disease (AD) (Group AD; n=13) and to a control group of normal olde r adults (Group NC; n=13) matched on age and education. Two measures w ere used to determine whether primary memory (PM) is impaired in early AD. One measure, considered a relatively ''pure'' measure of PM, is b ased on the procedure developed by Tulving and Colotla (1970) which co nsiders an item to be recalled from PM if no more than six items inter vene between its presentation and recall. The other measure is the mor e commonly used recall from recency. No significant difference between the AD and NC Groups was found, both on the Tulving and Colotla measu re, as well as on the recall from recency measure of PM. A significant difference was obtained on two measures of secondary memory (SM), nam ely, Tulving and Colotla's measure and recall from the primacy and mid dle regions of the list of words. In comparison to NC, the AD patients showed little evidence of learning over the five trials, and poor ret ention even over short delays. In addition, the patients with AD showe d deficits in clustering words by taxonomic category at recall. We con clude that impairment in PM cannot be used as a diagnostic marker of A D in the early stages of the disease process.