Meudell P R, Mayes A R, MacDonald C
Department of Psychology, University of Manchester.
Cortex. 1994 Mar;30(1):159-66. doi: 10.1016/s0010-9452(13)80331-0.
Normal peoples' memory can be seriously disrupted if their cognitive resources are depleted by means of an experimental manipulation (such as distraction at encoding or at retrieval). By analogy, it has also been suggested that amnesia might result directly from pathological loss of cognitive capacity. This hypothesis was examined in 12 mixed amnesics and 12 normal people by means of a 'dual task' study. It was argued that if amnesics have reduced cognitive resources they should be disproportionately impaired in dual task performance relative to single task performance and in comparison to controls. This result was unambiguously demonstrated using a visual (letter detection) task combined with an auditory (semantic decision) task. However, correlations with measures of frontal function and with indicants of severity of amnesia proved insignificant and so the role of resource depletion in amnesia remains, as yet, unproven.
如果通过实验操作（如在编码或检索时分散注意力）耗尽正常人群的认知资源，他们的记忆可能会受到严重干扰。以此类推，也有人提出失忆可能直接源于认知能力的病理性丧失。通过一项“双重任务”研究，对12名混合型失忆症患者和12名正常人进行了检验。有人认为，如果失忆症患者的认知资源减少，那么与单任务表现相比，以及与对照组相比，他们在双重任务表现中应会受到不成比例的损害。使用视觉（字母检测）任务与听觉（语义判断）任务相结合，明确证明了这一结果。然而，与额叶功能测量指标以及失忆症严重程度指标的相关性被证明不显著，因此，认知资源耗竭在失忆症中的作用尚未得到证实。
