CONTROLLED AND AUTOMATIC MEMORY PROCESS IN ALZHEIMERS-DISEASE

The aim of this study was to examine the contribution of controlled (o r conscious) and automatic (or unconscious) memory processes to the pe rformance of a stem-completion recall task by persons with Alzheimer's disease and a matched group of healthy elderly individuals. The recal l task made use of the process dissociaton procedure of Jacoby (1991), which allows the separate estimation of conscious and unconscious inf luences on memory. Recollection was found to be severely impaired in t he community dwelling demented patients. Further, the estimates of the automatic processing were also found to be reduced, although there wa s considerable overlap in the performance of the two groups on this pa rameter. It was found that the residual capacity of Alzheimer's patien ts to recall previously learned information was supported to a substan tial degree by their automatic memory processes.