Learning, retention, and conceptual usage in elderly patients with memory disorder.

Abstract

Elderly patients clinically judged to be suffering from memory disorder show difficulty in learning paired-associates, and the kind of tasks found in the Wechsler Performance Scale. The learning difficulty extends to other kinds of learning problems and retention processes are also affected. The relevance of some of Hebb''s notions concerning the likely relations between learning and cognitive functioning in human adults was also examined. The results confirmed expectations and suggested that the sort of neuropsychological model elaborated by Hebb may be a useful source of working hypotheses in this area. 18 refs.