[Metamemory and Parkinson's disease]

Metamemory is a multifaceted concept, which deals with the individual's knowledge and control of his or her own memory system. One metacognitive ability that has considerable importance in everyday life is the ability to control his or her own memory. In this study, we have examined whether Parkinson's disease affects the degree to which a person allocate study time. 17 Parkinson subjects and 18 older controls participated in this study. Parkinson subjects and control subjects made a readiness recall task in which subjects monitor themselves the learning procedure, allowing to measure metamemory control (study time by item). Control subjects were found to take more time in study than parkinson subjects. The lists were learned under two condition: a self-paced condition in which subjects could study each word as long as they would and an experimenter-paced condition. The analysis revealed that control subjects recalled more items than parkinson subjects only in the self-paced condition. These results suggested that Parkinson-related differences in the allocation of study time mediate a part of Parkinson-related differences in memory performance.