Preserved Priming of Novel Objects across Size Transformation in Amnesic Patients

Abstract

Previous research has indicated that amnesic patients can show normal priming of novel objects on a decision task in which subjects decide whether unfamiliar structures could or could not exist in the three-dimensional world. The present experiment reveals that amnesic patients exhibit normal priming on this task across a study-to-test size transformation despite impaired explicit memory. These results suggest that priming of novel objects in amnesia depends on a spared structural description system that computes size-invariant representations of visual objects.