Long-term cued recall of tasks in senile dementia

Participants with senile dementia of the Alzheimer's type, vascular dementia, or both, associated a task with a cue. On reinstatement of the cue 1 day later, a substantial portion of the sample recalled the task. The teaching method, both with and without participant performance of the task (PPT), was spaced retrieval with supplementary or fading cues provided as required. Findings were that (a) PPT encoding and retrieval encoding, separately, assisted later recall: (b) retrieval combined with PPT encoding increased the probability of task performance at final recall; (c) repetition in the absence of retrieval or PPT was less effective; and (d) there was no forgetting between 1 hr and 1 day. Theoretical and clinical aspects of these findings are discussed.