More on recognition and recall in amnesics

Abstract

Hirst et al. (1986) reported that amnesic forced-choice recognition was relatively preserved when compared with amnesic recall. They equated normal recognition and amnesic recognition by extending exposure time for the amnesics and then comparing amnesic recall and normal recall. Amnesic recall was worse than normal recall, despite equated recognition. We conducted two experiments to extend that result. Experiment 1 established that the findings of Hirst et al. are not paradigm specific and hold when amnesic recognition and normal recognition are equated by increasing the retention interval for normals. In Experiment 2 we further established the generality of the result by examining yes-no recognition. Findings further specify the selective nature of the direct memory deficit in amnesics.