CONDITIONING IN AMNESIC PATIENTS

An early clinical observation by Claparède suggests that classical conditioning occured in an amnesic patient even though the subject did not acknowledge memory for the conditioning as such. This suggestion is confirmed in two amnesic subjects (one alcoholic Korsakoff patient and one probable encephalitic patient) using the conditioned eye blink. Both subjects showed evidence of conditioning with retention across intervals of 10 min and 24 hr, and with both there was a striking dissociation between their objective performances and their commentaries. Conditioning apparently should be added to the growing list of examples of adequate long-term retention in amnesic subjects, the variety of which makes it difficult to interpret the deficit in terms of a failure of consolidation of particular types of material or of an insensitivity to particular encoding requirements. The theoretical basis of the dissociation between performance and commentary would appear to warrant further development. © 1979.