FONT-SPECIFIC PRIMING FOLLOWING GLOBAL AMNESIA AND OCCIPITAL LOBE DAMAGE

Font-specificity in visual word-stem completion priming was examined i n patients with global amnesia and Patient M.S., who had a right-occip ital lobectomy. Word-stems appeared in the same or different font as s tudy words. Amnesic patients showed normal font-specific priming (grea ter priming for words studied in the same than different font as test) , despite impaired word-stem cued recall. Patient M.S. failed to exhib it font-specific priming, despite preserved declarative memory. Theref ore, perceptual specificity in visual priming depends on visual proces ses mediated by the right-occipital lobe rather than medial temporal a nd diencephalic regions involved in declarative memory.