Memory monitoring and memory control in chronic stroke patients Dissociated processes

Memory problems are common in stroke patients, although little is known about how accurately chronic stroke patients can monitor and control memory processes.

The performance of memory and metamemory in stroke patients and healthy controls were investigated, as well as dissociation between performances.

10 adults with right hemisphere lesion (mean [M] age=53.2 [SD=9.7]), 10 with left hemisphere lesion (M age=60.4 [SD=6.6]) and 20 healthy participants (M age=56.5 [SD=9.3] with no neurological disease, matched for sex, age and years of education participated in a multiple-case design study. Participants completed a metamemory experimental paradigm, as well as immediate and delayed word recall and recognition tasks.

Data indicated that 10 out of the 20 patients presented significantly lower scores compared to controls, two of which had global deficits (functional association). Functional dissociations between memory monitoring (judgments of learning, JOL), control (allocation of study time) and capacity (cued-recall task) among patients were found for eight cases, suggesting these processes are independent.

These findings reveal stroke patients may have specific metamemory impairment and can contribute to the understanding of cognitive models of metamemory processing.