Korsakoff patients are generally agreed to be impaired in conscious recolle
ction, but whether their implicit memory performance is also affected is le
ss certain. A deficit in novelty dependent encoding (i.e., elaboration lear
ning) could account for both types of impairments and predicts a reduced im
plicit word frequency effect in the patients. This effect was examined with
word stem completion in nineteen Korsakoff patients and nineteen healthy c
ontrols. The word frequency effect was larger in controls than in patients
in absolute terms, but not reliably so. It is concluded that elaboration le
arning may be spared to some degree in Korsakoff amnesia, but, in line with
the original reasoning by Rorsakoff (1889/1996), it may only be engaged by
the patients when they are continuously prompted to do so.