SHORT-TERM AND LONG-TERM-MEMORY IN EARLY TEMPORAL-LOBE DYSFUNCTION

Following medial temporal damage, mature humans are impaired in retain ing new information over long delays but not short delays. The questio n of whether a similar dissociation occurs in children was addressed b y testing children (ages 7-16) with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and controls on short-and long-term memory tasks, including a sp atial delayed response task (SDR). Early-onset TLE did not affect perf ormance on short delays on SDR, but it did impair performance at the l ongest delay (60 s), similar to adults with unilateral medial temporal damage. In addition, early-onset TLE affected performance on pattern recall, spatial span, and verbal span with rehearsal interference. No differences were found on story recall or on a response inhibition tas k.