ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates the efforts on describing performance deficits of the aged and the amnesic in short-term memory tasks. The rationale motivating the comparisons was that an analysis of similarities and differences provides a vehicle for distinguishing between performance deficits based on diffuse cortical and subcortical changes and those originating from more specific lesions. In that light the comparisons presented useful in elucidating deficits common to both groups and in isolating an additional deficit in amnesics not found in the normal aged. Evidence relevant to the sensitivity of short-term memory tasks to relatively specific subcortical damage and to more diffuse cortical and subcortical changes is presented through comparisons of amnesic Korsakoff patients and the normal aged. The magnitude of the difference between young and old on a series of short-term memory tasks, including supraspan serial and constrained recall, dichotic memory, and serial recall with a stimulus suffix, is proportional to the difference in digit span between groups.
