Attributions of familiarity in amnesia: Evidence from a fame judgment task.

To evaluate the extent to which amnesic patients can attribute the source of familiarity to its correct source during a fame judgment task, gains in familiarity were placed in opposition to conscious recollection. In the 1st experiment, patients and controls were told specifically that nonfamous names presented just prior to a fame judgment task were not famous; in the 2nd experiment they were told that nonfamous names were in fact famous. Although such instructions produced dramatically different results in the fame judgment performance of normal control Ss, minimal change in attribution of fame occurred for the amnesic Ss. It is concluded that the amnesic Ss were unable to attribute the familiarity of a previously presented name to its correct source because of their inability to recollect a name's prior presentation. Hence, it may be the nature of the memory query rather than the adequacy of a specific memory system that determines whether or not an amnesic patient can access information in memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)