Hulme C, Lee G, Brown G D
Department of Psychology, University of York, U.K.
Neuropsychologia. 1993 Feb;31(2):161-72. doi: 10.1016/0028-3932(93)90044-z.
Two experiments are described which investigate the short-term memory deficits found in Alzheimer-type dementia. In the first experiment memory span for words of differing spoken duration is related to speech rate. Memory span was lower in subjects suffering from Alzheimer-type dementia than for normal elderly controls but in both cases a linear function related recall to speech rate for items of differing spoken durations. The function for Alzheimer subjects had an equivalent slope (interpreted as reflecting a contribution from a sub-vocal rehearsal process) but a lower intercept (interpreted as reflecting a contribution from a long-term memory component). The second experiment investigated the effects of repeating supra-span lists of items in a serial recall task. As predicted the control subjects showed substantial increases in recall across trials associated with elevations of the speech rate/recall functions while the Alzheimer subjects showed very little benefit from repetition of the lists. We conclude that the verbal short-term memory deficit found in Alzheimer-type dementia has two components: a deficit in the rate of rehearsal and an impairment in the long-term memory component of short-term recall.
本文描述了两项实验，它们研究了在阿尔茨海默型痴呆中发现的短期记忆缺陷。在第一个实验中，不同语音持续时间的单词的记忆广度与语速相关。患有阿尔茨海默型痴呆的受试者的记忆广度低于正常老年对照组，但在两种情况下，对于不同语音持续时间的项目，回忆与语速之间都存在线性函数关系。阿尔茨海默病受试者的函数具有相同的斜率（解释为反映来自默读复述过程的贡献），但截距较低（解释为反映来自长期记忆成分的贡献）。第二个实验研究了在系列回忆任务中重复超广度项目列表的影响。正如预测的那样，对照组受试者在各次试验中的回忆有显著增加，这与语速/回忆函数的提高相关，而阿尔茨海默病受试者从列表重复中获益甚微。我们得出结论，在阿尔茨海默型痴呆中发现的言语短期记忆缺陷有两个组成部分：复述速率缺陷和短期回忆的长期记忆成分损伤。
