Amnesic sensitivity to proactive interference: its relationship to priming and the causes of amnesia.

A group of alcoholic amnesics was compared with a group of controls on an A-B, A-C word pairs interference paradigm. With memory instructions the amnesics needed 5 presentation trials to their controls' single trials to match the groups on A-B cued recall. Under these conditions they still showed more proactive interference on the A-C list. When both groups were given five presentation trials for each list and 'free association' instructions, then they both showed this level of interference. This suggested that the amnesic interference effect only occurs because priming is not modulated by conscious memory, i.e. it is an effect of poor conscious memory. This interpretation was further supported by the finding that amnesics forgot the A-B list faster over 2 hr than their controls, when memory instructions were given.