Facial recognition memory deficits in normal aging and senile dementia.

Recognition memory for faces was studied in 167 subjects comprised of young normals, elderly normals and elderly senile dementia patients with mild to moderate cognitive impairment. A continuous recognition paradigm was used which required an "old-new" decision to be made for each facial stimulus. The design of the stimulus sequence produced delay intervals of .5, 1, 2, and 4 min between the first and second presentations of each face, and a long delay of 40 min was also evaluated. A signal detection analysis revealed large recognition memory deficits at all delay intervals for the two elderly groups as compared to the young normals, but no differences between the normal and impaired elderly groups. In addition, there were no group differences in response criterion. The results suggest a deficit in nonverbal encoding/storage due to normal aging but no further deficit due to mild to moderate senile dementia. The data also fail to confirm an age-related increase in "cautiousness" in recognition memory tasks.