The effect of verbal mediators on the pictorial memory of brain-damaged patients.
Patients with alcoholic Korskoff's syndrome, Huntington's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease or right-hemisphere damage were administered a picture recognition task in which they attempted to associate specific human and animal figures with particular scenic backgrounds. Under one condition (no-story), no explicit verbal cues were provided to help the patients associate the figures with the scenes; in a second condition, stories, stories linking the figures to the background scenes were read to the patients during the study period. Although all four patient groups were impaired in picture-context recognition under the no-story condition, the groups differed significantly in their ability to use the stories to improve their pictorial memory. The Huntington and right-hemisphere patients' picture recognition showed significant improvement when stories were provided, whereas the Korsakoff and Alzheimer patients failed to use this verbal material in a productive manner. The groups also differed in their tendency to make intrusion (i.e., perseverative) errors on the picture-context recognition task. These group differences may be related to the combination of language, cognitive and motivational deficits associated with each disease.
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000425:Alcohol Amnestic Disorder / Q000523:psychology; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000523:psychology; D001925:Brain Damage, Chronic / Q000523:psychology*; D003463:Cues; D003704:Dementia / Q000523:psychology; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006816:Huntington Disease / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D008875:Middle Aged; D014705:Verbal Behavior