Some analyses of the verbal encoding deficit of alcoholic Korsakoff patients

Working Memory: Theories, Models, and Controversies

“…Amnesic patients should have semantic coding problems, and recency should be acoustically based. Studies based on amnesic patients suffering from Korsakoff 's syndrome did suggest a semantic encoding deficit (Cermak et al 1974), but our own work showed no evidence of such a deficit (Baddeley & Warrington 1970), and later work (Cermak & Reale 1978) attributed their previously observed deficit to additional executive problems, often found in Korsakoff 's syndrome.…”

A review of theories of human amnesia

“…This reliance by amnesics on what Cermak, Butters, and Moreines (1974) term the more readily analyzable dimensions of encoding has been seen by Cermak and his co-workers as being the fundamental cause for the great susceptibility of amnesics to PI. That is, because information encoded at "surface" rather than "deep" levels is more susceptible to interference, amnesic subjects may not perform as well as controls.…”

“…That is, because information encoded at "surface" rather than "deep" levels is more susceptible to interference, amnesic subjects may not perform as well as controls. Cermak et al (1974) have further examined this possibility using a releasefrom-PI paradigm. In this paradigm, a switch in the properties of the to-be-remembered items after PI has built up causes an immediate improvement in memory performance by allowing unique retrieval cues to access the novel information.…”

The word frequency effect in recognition memory versus repetition priming

“…4. It is also relevant to note that the amnesic subjects who showed superior recognition memory for low-frequency than for high-frequency words were all Korsakoffpatients (Huppert & Piercy, 1976;Verfaellie et aI., 1991), who typically have some frontal lobe damage and are often found to be impaired especially on conceptual processing ability (see, e.g., Cermak, Butters, & Moreines, 1974). It is possible, therefore, that these patients have a particular propensity to rely on perceptual fluency in making recognition memory judgments, which may not be the case with amnesics with different etiologies (see Haist, Shimamura, & Squire, 1992, for a related view).…”