TY - JOUR
T1 - Item priming and skill learning in amnesia
AU - Rich, Jill B.
AU - Bylsma, Frederick W.
AU - Brandt, Jason
N1 - Funding Information:
* Jill B. Rich is currently at the Department of Psychology, York University, North York, Ontario, Canada. This study was supported, in part, by grant AGO0149 from the National Institutes of Health (J.B.) and by the John Boogher Fellowship in Memory Disorders (J.B.R.). A version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society, Cincinnati, OH, February 1994. Requests for reprints should be sent to Jason Brandt, Ph.D., Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Meyer 218, 600 North Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21287-7218, USA. Accepted for publication: August 8, 1995.
PY - 1996
Y1 - 1996
N2 - This study employed a semantic decision-making task to examine both item priming and skill learning in amnesia, which traditionally have been demonstrated with separate tasks. Fourteen amnesic patients of mixed etiologies and 14 normal control subjects judged whether words represented animate or inanimate objects. One list was presented repeatedly on four continuous blocks of trials, and a new list was presented on the fifth block. For both groups, decision times decreased significantly from Block 1 to Block 5 (indicating skill acquisition) and increased significantly from Block 4 to Block 5 (indicating item-specific learning). The amnesic patients demonstrated a normal rate of skill learning, but a reduced magnitude of item priming. As expected, the amnesics had significantly impaired explicit memory of the implicitly learned items, as measured by recognition accuracy. The results suggest that both implicit and explicit learning of individual items is impaired in amnesia, despite normal semantic skill learning.
AB - This study employed a semantic decision-making task to examine both item priming and skill learning in amnesia, which traditionally have been demonstrated with separate tasks. Fourteen amnesic patients of mixed etiologies and 14 normal control subjects judged whether words represented animate or inanimate objects. One list was presented repeatedly on four continuous blocks of trials, and a new list was presented on the fifth block. For both groups, decision times decreased significantly from Block 1 to Block 5 (indicating skill acquisition) and increased significantly from Block 4 to Block 5 (indicating item-specific learning). The amnesic patients demonstrated a normal rate of skill learning, but a reduced magnitude of item priming. As expected, the amnesics had significantly impaired explicit memory of the implicitly learned items, as measured by recognition accuracy. The results suggest that both implicit and explicit learning of individual items is impaired in amnesia, despite normal semantic skill learning.
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U2 - 10.1080/01688639608408270
DO - 10.1080/01688639608408270
M3 - Article
C2 - 8926293
AN - SCOPUS:0030041003
SN - 1380-3395
VL - 18
SP - 148
EP - 158
JO - Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology
JF - Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology
IS - 1
ER -