Rehearsal strategy use in Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Memory strategy usage and awareness of memory performance are both crucial for memory rehabilitation. We explored Alzheimer's patients' ability to apply and control learning strategies and also their ability to predict the effect of these strategies on subsequent performance. In a rehearsal condition, participants were explicitly asked to overtly rehearse words and were given as long as they liked at study. In a control condition, participants read the words passively at a fixed presentation rate. In all groups, recall was superior in the rehearsal condition than in the reading condition. Alzheimer's patients showed different strategy usage. Overall, people with Alzheimer's disease spend longer studying to-be-remembered words under unpaced conditions, but they do not use this time to rehearse to the same extent as controls. We hypothesize that this failure to rehearse could be based on the inability to use effortful executive mechanisms involved during study.

Keywords:

• Alzheimer's disease
• Rehearsal strategy
• Metamemory
• Awareness

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Groupement d'Intérêt Scientifique (GIS) Institut de la Longévité et du Vieillissement grant (2007) and by a Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Economic and Social Research Council (CNRS/ESRC) Recollection Workshop grant (2006–2008).