Deficits in the implicit retention of new associations by alcoholic Korsakoff patients

Word-stem completion in the presence or absence of a paired associate was assessed for a group of amnesic Korsakoff patients and a group of alcoholic controls. Since neither group demonstrated facilitation in the presence of cues (Experiment 1), an analysis of the influence of instructions to remember the paired associates on cued word-stem completion was performed with college students (Experiment 2). Finding a positive effect of instructions led to a replication of the task with amnesic patients and alcoholic controls. Unfortunately, instructions to remember the pairs did not produce the facilitatory effect for either group nor for an age matched nonalcoholic control group. (Experiment 3). It was concluded that neither amnesics, chronic alcoholics, nor elderly controls had the ability to modify their analysis of verbal material as a function of retrieval expectations. As a consequence, neither group demonstrated the effect of contextual priming of word completions reported by P. Graf and D. L. Schacter (1985, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 11, 501-518).