A cognitive neuropsychological model for memory rehabilitation of amnesic patients

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The aim of this research was to delineate the contributions of error and effort factors to amnesic patients' memory performance. Error is defined as whether a study condition prevents from (errorless) or elicits (errorful) incorrect responses during training; effort is defined as whether patients are required to generate a target word in the absence of its intact presentation (efforfful) or they are required to read a target that is intactly presented (effortless). Amnesic patients were shown a face photograph and were asked to learn the corresponding surname under four different study conditions. In the initial letter condition, the patients were presented with the initial letter of a target surname and were required to generate it. In the vanishing cues condition, the letter of a target surname was gradually withdrawn across training trials. In the target selection condition, the patients were asked to select the correct surname from a set of alternatives. In the paired associate condition, a target surname was presented in its intact form together with the corresponding face. The results showed that recall performance gradually improved over four training sessions and was affected by the error factor. The paired associate and the vanishing cues methods led superior recall in comparison with the target selection and the initial letter methods, demonstrating an advantage of errorless over errorful learning. In contrast, the effort factor was found to have little effect. The effectiveness of the vanishing cues method was further examined over additional five training sessions. As indexed by a delayed test, the gradual acquisition of face-name associations was confirmed, but some patients consisitently made no correct recall throughout the sessions. The roles of error and effort in the memory rehabilitation of amnesic patients were discussed.