Amnesic patients have residual prospective memory capacities (original) (raw)

2018, The Clinical neuropsychologist

To investigate, in two separate studies, whether amnesic patients with a severe memory impairment can learn to perform a habitual prospective memory task when they receive immediate feedback on prospective memory failures (Study 1) and whether amnesic patients are able to benefit from previous habitual prospective memory performance after a 24-h retention interval. A prospective memory task was embedded in a lexical decision task (Study 1) and in a perceptual discrimination task (Study 2). Performance was compared across test halves. Participants received immediate performance feedback on prospective memory failures that served as a reminder for the prospective memory task. A retest was performed after 24 h in Study 2, but without immediate feedback in the first test half. In Study 1, amnesic patients performed at a lower level than the control group, but they improved significantly across the experiment. In Study 2, the results of the first session replicated this pattern. The resu...