The influence of semantic and perceptual encoding on recognition memory in Alzheimer’s disease

Previous results from a population of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (Dalla Barba and Goldblum, 1996) demonstrated that the ability of patients to make a semantic association between two items was significantly and positively correlated to their performance on a yes\no recognition task for the same items and that patients who were impaired on the semantic task did significantly worse on the recognition task than patients who were unimpaired on the semantic task. These findings gave support to a hierarchical model of organization of human memory in which episodic memory depends on the integrity of semantic memory. The present study further investigates the relationship between semantic memory deficits and episodic recognition memory in 15 patients with Alzheimer’s disease and 15 controls, as a function of their semantic and perceptual encoding abilities and of their cognitive impairment in other domains. The results confirmed the previous findings and showed that, although patients heavily relied on perceptual analysis, this type of encoding did not enhance their recognition memory. Correlations analyses showed that some patients who were not impaired in the semantic association, but with particularly low scores on a verbal fluency task presented with a pattern, in recognition memory tasks, that suggests a possible early involvement of frontal lobes in this subgroup of patients.