PRESERVED PRIMING ACROSS STUDY-TEST PICTURE TRANSFORMATIONS IN PATIENTS WITH ALZHEIMERS-DISEASE

Picture-naming priming was examined across different study-test transf ormations to explore the nature of memory representations of objects s upporting implicit memory processes in patients with Alzheimer's disea se (AD). Although severely impaired in explicit memory for pictures an d words, AD patients demonstrated normal priming across perceptual tra nsformations in picture orientation (Experiment 1) and picture size (E xperiment 2) and across symbolic transformations from words to picture s (Experiment 3). In addition, the priming across alterations in pictu re size was invariant. This demonstrates that AD patients have preserv ed implicit memory for high-level, abstract representations of objects .