E. Brunfaut et al., Prospective remembering of Korsakoffs and alcoholics as a function of the prospective-memory and on-going tasks, NEUROPSYCHO, 38(7), 2000, pp. 975-984
Prospective memory is assumed to rely more on the frontal lobes than retros
pective memory. Since Korsakoff patients are known to suffer from a general
cerebral atrophy and a frontal lobe atrophy in particular, they are expect
ed to show considerably impaired prospective memory. In Experiment 1, the p
erformance of Korsakoff patients on a semantic prospective-memory task (whi
ch was embedded in a perceptual on-going task) was particularly bad in Sess
ion 1; in Session 2, the Korsakoff patients improved substantially, to reac
h the performance level of nonamnesic alcoholics. In Experiment 2, prospect
ive memory of the Korsakoff patients and nonamnesic alcoholics was better w
hen the on-going task was more similar to the prospective memory task; part
icularly striking was the much better prospective memory in the semantic pr
ospective-memory task when the on-going task requires a semantic analysis t
han when the on-going task requires perceptual processing. The findings are
in agreement with a task-appropriate processing explanation but also in pa
rtial agreement with the attention hypothesis of the instance theory of aut
omaticity. Contrary to the frontal lobe hypothesis, prospective memory of t
he Korsakoff patients was surprisingly good in several aspects of the two e
xperiments. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.