Barba G D, Frasson E, Mantovan M C, Gallo A, Denes G
INSERM, Paris, France.
Neuropsychologia. 1996 May;34(5):361-7. doi: 10.1016/0028-3932(95)00129-8.
Within the framework of the distinction between episodic and semantic memory, it has been argued that these two memory Systems are organised in a hierarchical way. The hierarchical hypothesis assumes that episodic memory is a specific subsystem of semantic memory and therefore implies that episodic memory cannot exist without semantic memory. If this hypothesis is correct, it should be expected that (episodic) yes/no recognition performance would improve in patients with preserved semantic memory, following semantic encoding. In the present study we investigated the influence of semantic encoding on recognition memory performance in a population of 28 aphasic patients (AA) and 14 normal controls (NC). Experiment 1 considered recognition memory for semantically unrelated items, whereas Experiments 2 and 3 assessed recognition memory for semantically related items. In Experiment 3, but not in Experiment 2, subjects were explicitly instructed to make a semantic association between the items. AA were impaired, compared to NC, only on the recognition memory performance of Experiment 1. The ability to make a semantic association between two items was significantly and positively correlated to the ability to recognise, in a subsequent test, those same items. A further analysis showed that patients who were impaired on the semantic association task did significantly worse on the recognition task of Experiment 3 than NC and than patients who were unimpaired on the semantic association task. These findings are discussed in the context of memory deficits in aphasia and interpreted as giving support to the view that episodic memory for an item is affected by the level of semantic awareness of that same item.
在情景记忆和语义记忆区分的框架内，有人认为这两种记忆系统是以层次方式组织的。层次假说假定情景记忆是语义记忆的一个特定子系统，因此意味着没有语义记忆情景记忆就不可能存在。如果这个假说正确，那么可以预期，在语义编码后，语义记忆保留的患者的（情景）是/否识别表现会得到改善。在本研究中，我们调查了语义编码对28名失语症患者（AA）和14名正常对照者（NC）的识别记忆表现的影响。实验1考虑了对语义无关项目的识别记忆，而实验2和实验3评估了对语义相关项目的识别记忆。在实验3中，而不是在实验2中，明确指示受试者在项目之间建立语义关联。与NC相比，AA仅在实验1的识别记忆表现上受损。在随后的测试中，在两个项目之间建立语义关联的能力与识别相同项目的能力显著正相关。进一步的分析表明，在语义关联任务上受损的患者在实验3的识别任务上比NC以及在语义关联任务上未受损的患者表现得明显更差。这些发现将在失语症记忆缺陷的背景下进行讨论，并被解释为支持这样一种观点，即对一个项目的情景记忆会受到该项目语义意识水平的影响。
