Publication Abstract Display
Type: Published Manuscript
Title: Recency effects in HIV-associated dementia are characterized by deficient encoding.
Authors: Scott JC, Woods SP, Patterson KA, Morgan EE, Heaton RK, Grant I, Marcotte TD, and the HNRC Group
Year: 2006
Publication: Neuropsychologia
Volume: 44 Issue: Pages: 1336-1343
Abstract:The aim of the present study was to investigate the nature and cognitive mechanisms of serial position learning effects in HIV-associated dementia (HAD). Participants were 16 persons with HAD, 50 non-demented persons with HIV-infection, and 50 demographically comparable HIV-seronegative participants. HAD participants, relative to both comparison groups, exhibited reduced middle region (p<0.01) and elevated recency region (p<0.05) recall on the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised, but no primacy region effect (p>0.10). On recognition testing, the HAD group was impaired in discriminating targets from distractors (p<0.01) in all three serial position regions; however, they were not impaired on measures of retrieval (p>0.10) within these same regions. In sum, HAD participants relied disproportionately on recency regions of the list, indicating a passive recall style of echoing only the words within their auditory attention span. Interestingly, HAD participants did not evidence significant improvement on measures of recognition, a finding that suggests that the serial position effects are most consistent with a primary encoding deficit.

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