Associative learning impairments in patients with frontal lobe damage

The performance of 18 frontal lobe lesion (FL) and 10 frontal lobe dementia (FLD) patients on an associative memory test was compared with the perform ance of their matched normal controls. The FL group was severely impaired o n cued and free recall and was moderately impaired on a recognition conditi on. Left FL patients performed the poorest on the cued and free recall cond itions. The no patients were moderately impaired on the free recall conditi on only but there was a subgroup of no patients with additional left tempor al atrophy who appeared severely impaired on both cued and free recall. The se findings indicate that both left frontal and temporal lobe damage can im pair associative learning and that this impairment is more strikingly seen with free rather than cued recall. (C) 1999 Academic Press.