Source memory in Parkinson's disease

Three experiments (ns = 14 per group) are reported are which investigated t he ability of Parkinson patients to remember the characteristics of conditi ons under which a memory was acquired. In Exp. 1, subjects were required to indicate fur each item in a recognition memory test whether it was spoken by Experimenter 1 or by Experimenter 2 (external-external source memory). I n Exp. 2, subjects had to indicate for each item whether it was generated b y themselves or by the experimenter (internal-external source memory). Ln E xp. 3, subjects had to judge whether an item was generated by themselves in saying or in thinking (internal-internal source memory). We found that pat ients with Parkinson's disease were not impaired in the previous two kinds of source memory (Exp. 1 and 2) but were impaired in internal-internal sour ce memory (Exp. 3) relative to the age-matched control groups. In addition, both groups' performance could be improved when given distinctive cues, i. e., perceptual cues in Exp. 1 and different-domain cues in Exp. 2. These re sults suggest that the availability of cues was critical for Parkinson's di sease in source memory. Finally, the result of Esp. 2 also showed generatio n effects for patients with Parkinson's disease. The generation effect refe rs to better memory of information by people when they had to produce it, e .g., producing associates to a word, compared with memory of information gi ven to them.