J Cogn Neurosci. 1993 Fall;5(4):375-89. doi: 10.1162/jocn.1993.5.4.375.
Abstract The question of whether globally amnesic subjects can learn new semantic (factual) information is controversial. Some students of amnesia believe that they can, others that they cannot. In this article we report an extensive experiment conducted with the amnesic patient K.C. in which we examined the role of repetition and associative interference in his learning of new semantic information. In the course of 8 study sessions distributed over 4 weeks, we taught K.C. novel, amusing definitions of 96 target words (e.g., "a talkative featherbrain-PARAKEET"). We varied systematically the degree of both pre-experimental and intraexperimental associative interference, as well as the amount of study. The results of the experiment showed that K.C. can learn new semantic knowledge, and retain it over a period as long as 30 months indistinguishably from control subjects. The results further showed that the efficacy of such learning depends critically on both repetition of the material and the absence, or minimization, of pre-experimental and intraexperimental associative interference. These findings suggest that the extent to which at least some amnesic patients can acquire and retain new semantic knowledge depends on the conditions under which learning occurs, and that unqualified statements regarding the deficiency or absence of such learning in amnesia are not justified.
摘要 关于全球健忘症患者是否能够学习新的语义（事实）信息的问题存在争议。一些健忘症学生认为他们可以，而另一些则认为他们不能。在本文中，我们报告了一项对健忘症患者 K.C.进行的广泛实验，该实验研究了重复和联想干扰在他学习新语义信息中的作用。在 4 周的 8 个学习阶段中，我们向 K.C.教授了 96 个目标单词（例如“喋喋不休的笨蛋-长尾小鹦鹉”）的新颖有趣的定义。我们系统地改变了实验前和实验内联想干扰的程度以及学习的数量。实验结果表明，K.C.可以学习新的语义知识，并在长达 30 个月的时间内与对照组一样毫不费力地保持知识。结果进一步表明，这种学习的效果取决于材料的重复以及实验前和实验内联想干扰的不存在或最小化。这些发现表明，至少一些健忘症患者能够获得和保留新的语义知识的程度取决于学习发生的条件，因此，对于健忘症中存在或不存在这种学习的无限制声明是没有道理的。
