Preserved priming across study-test picture transformations in patients with Alzheimer's disease

Picture-naming priming was examined across different study-test transformations to explore the nature of memory representations of objects supporting implicit memory processes in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Although severely impaired in explicit memory for pictures and words, AD patients demonstrated normal priming across perceptual transformations in picture orientation (Experiment 1) and picture size (Experiment 2) and across symbolic transformations from words to pictures (Experiment 3). In addition, the priming across alterations in picture size was invariant. This demonstrates that AD patients have preserved implicit memory for high-level, abstract representations of objects.