Just lying there, remembering: Improving recall of prose in amnesic patients with mild cognitive impairment by minimising interference

Abstract

The hallmark of amnesia is poor explicit long‐term memory along with normal short‐term memory. It is often stated that information encountered by amnesic patients is forgotten within 1 minute of presentation. However, previous work has not distinguished between forgetting as a function of time versus the interfering material occupying that time. We show that there is a marked benefit of reduced interference in amnesic patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition that is characterised by anterograde amnesia in the absence of other neuropsychological deficits and carries an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease. The result suggests that long‐term memory is encoded in these patients to a greater extent than had been realised but that their memory is highly vulnerable to interference.

Notes

Correspondence should be addressed to Sergio Della Sala, Department of Psychology, King's College, University of Aberdeen, AB24 2UB, Aberdeen, UK. Email: [email protected] or Nelson Cowan, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, 210 McAlester Hall, Columbia, MO 65211, USA. Email: [email protected]

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sergio Della Sala

Correspondence should be addressed to Sergio Della Sala, Department of Psychology, King's College, University of Aberdeen, AB24 2UB, Aberdeen, UK. Email: [email protected] or Nelson Cowan, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, 210 McAlester Hall, Columbia, MO 65211, USA. Email: [email protected]