Do amnesics forget faces pathologically fast?

Abstract

In 1978, Huppert and Piercy introduced a general method for comparing forgetting rates across groups differing in their baseline memory performance. The method has since become a standard for measuring rate of forgetting in amnesia. Using this method, amnesic subjects with presumed damage to midline diencephalic structures have consistently been reported to forget at a normal rate whereas patients with medial temporal lobe damage have sometimes been reported to forget pathologically fast. Conclusions about amnesic forgetting rates using Huppert and Piercy's procedure, however, are unsafe because the matching procedure results in the shortest mean item-presentation-to-test delay being longer in amnesics than control subjects. A further problem with previous work is that frequently the shortest delay at which performance is measured is 10 minutes. An alternative procedure to Huppert and Piercy's is outlined which eliminates the matching confound. An experiment was carried out using this procedure with face stimuli, and with amnesic and control performance matched immediately following study, and then tested at delays of 5, 12, and 30 minutes. Pathologically fast forgetting was observed in a group of 19 amnesics over the first 5 minutes, but between 12 and 30 minutes their controls forgot faster so that the two groups had forgotten the same amount after 30 minutes. A subgroup of nine Korsakoff patients, with probable damage to midline diencephalic structures, showed a similar abnormal forgetting pattern to the remaining 10 amnesics, some of whom had medial temporal lobe damage. A retroactive interference condition was also included for the 12 minute condition at which delay patient and control recognition was mildly and equivalently disrupted. For unknown reasons perhaps related to a storage abnormality, amnesics lose face recognition memory sooner in the first 30 minutes of forgetting than do normal people, who show accelerated forgetting later so as to match patients after 30 minutes delay.