Rehearsal strategies of Alcoholic Korsakoff patients

An overt rehearsal procedure was used to monitor the rehearsal strategies that Alcoholic Korsakoff, Chronic Alcoholic, and Normal Control patients used when learning a 20-item list. It was found that Korsakoff patients spontaneously rehearse only one word at a time, that word being the one currently presented, regardless of the organizational salience of the list of words. Alcholics and Control patients, on the other hand, tended to rehearse several words in addition to the one being currently presented, and they demonstrated increasing ability to rehearse semantically related words together as the organizational salience of the list increased. This ability to rehearse in an enriched manner placed the two control groups at a distinct advantage over the Korsakoff patients at the time of recalling the list.