IMPAIRED RECALL OF VERBAL MATERIAL FOLLOWING RUPTURE AND REPAIR OF ANANTERIOR COMMUNICATING ARTERY ANEURYSM

This paper presents a detailed investigation of the memory impairment suffered by a patient, ROB, following the rupture and repair of an ant erior communicating artery aneurysm that damaged her left hemisphere. ROB is severely impaired on standard tests of verbal recall such as pa ired-associate learning and memory for prose passages. Nevertheless sh e performs normally on both versions of Warrington's (1984) recognitio n memory test, and on tests that require recall of visuo-spatial mater ial. She also shows no evidence of confabulation. The discrepancy betw een recall and recognition performance persists even when attempts are made to ensure that the two types of test are equally ''difficult'' ( cf. Calev, 1984). The impairment does not seem to be caused by inappro priate encoding strategies, since recall performance is not improved b y imagery instructions or by levels of processing manipulations (Craik & Tulving, 1975). She also performs normally on implicit memory tests regardless of whether they involve data-driven or concept-driven retr ieval processes (cf. Roediger, 1990a; 1990b). It is argued that her re call problems reflect an inability to set up effective retrieval strat egies that would enable her to access information stored in episodic m emory.