The relationship between prior knowledge and face recognition memory in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease

Normal older adults (M = 66.1 years) and mildly demented patients with a presumptive diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (M = 68.0 years) studied a series of dated and contemporary famous faces for purposes of later recognition. In conjunction with the recognition test, subjects were asked to indicate whether they perceived the faces as familiar on the basis of pre-experimental knowledge, and to select the correct name for each face in a four-alternative multiple-choice test. Results showed that both groups of subjects (a) perceived more dated than contemporary faces as familiar, and (b) performed better for dated than for contemporary faces in the name recognition task. This pattern of results indicates an advantage of dated over contemporary information as general knowledge for both groups of subjects. In the episodic face recognition task, normal older adults performed better for dated than for contemporary faces, whereas demented patients performed equally well for both types of faces. The overall pattern of outcome suggests that Alzheimer's disease is associated with a deficit in the ability to utilize task-relevant prior knowledge to enhance episodic remembering.