Source memory in Parkinson's disease.
Three experiments (ns = 14 per group) are reported which investigated the ability of Parkinson patients to remember the characteristics of conditions under which a memory was acquired. In Exp. 1, subjects were required to indicate for each item in a recognition memory test whether it was spoken by Experimenter 1 or by Experimenter 2 (external-external source memory). In Exp. 2, subjects had to indicate for each item whether it was generated by themselves or by the experimenter (internal-external source memory). In Exp. 3, subjects had to judge whether an item was generated by themselves in saying or in thinking (internal-internal source memory). We found that patients 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 source 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 results suggest that the availability of cues was critical for Parkinson's disease in source memory. Finally, the result of Exp. 2 also showed generation effects for patients with Parkinson's disease. The generation effect refers 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 given to them.
Hsieh
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National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan. psyhsl@ccunix.ccu.edu.tw
Lee
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CY
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001307:Auditory Perception; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D014705:Verbal Behavior