Role of Verbal Mediation in Performance of Motor Tasks by Korsakoff Patients

Abstract

9 patients with Korsakoff's disease were examined for their ability to learn a finger maze (verbally mediated) and a pursuit-rotor (non-verbally mediated) task. Such patients (matched on IQ and age) were significantly worse than either 9 alcoholic or 9 normal control patients on the finger-maze task but were similar to both groups on the pursuit-rotor task. It was concluded that the verbal encoding deficit of Korsakoff patients can explain their difficulty in learning motor tasks involving verbal mediation.