Objectives: Although the influence of prior knowledge on associative memory in healthy aging has received great attention, it has never been studied in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This study aimed at assessing whether AD patients could benefit from prior knowledge in associative memory and whether such benefit would be related to the integrity of their semantic memory. Methods: Twenty-one AD patients and 21 healthy older adults took part in an associative memory task using semantically related and unrelated word pairs and were also submitted to an evaluation of their semantic memory. Results: While participants of both groups benefited from semantic relatedness in associative discrimination, related pairs recognition was significantly predicted by semantic memory integrity in healthy older adults only. Conclusions: We suggest that patients benefitted from semantic knowledge to improve their performance in the associative memory task, but that such performance is not related to semantic knowledge integrity evaluation measures because the two tasks differ in the way semantic information is accessed: in an automatic manner for the associative memory task, with automatic processes thought to be relatively preserved in AD, and in a controlled manner for the semantic knowledge evaluation, with controlled processes thought to be impaired in AD. (JINS, 2019, 25, 443–452)

The purpose of this study was to investigate associative learning effects in patients with prodromal Alzheimer’s disease (prAD) by referring to the Temporal Context Model (TCM; Howard, Jing, Rao, Provyn, & Datey, 2009), in an attempt to enhance the understanding of their associative memory impairment. TCM explains fundamental effects described in classical free-recall tasks and cued-recall tasks involving overlapping word pairs (e.g., A-B, B-C), namely (1) the contiguity effect, which is the tendency to successively recall nearby items in a list, and (2) the observation of backward (i.e., B-A) and transitive associations (i.e., A-C) between items. In TCM, these effects are hypothesized to rely on contextual representation, binding and retrieval processes, which supposedly depend on hippocampal and parahippocampal regions. As these regions are affected in prAD, the current study investigated whether prAD patients would show reduced proportions of backward and transitive associations in free and cued-recall, coupled to a reduced contiguity effect in free-recall. Seventeen older controls and 17 prAD patients performed a cued-recall task involving overlapping word pairs and a final free-recall task. Proportions of backward and transitive intrusions in cued-recall did not significantly differ between groups. However, in free-recall, prAD patients demonstrated a reduced contiguity effect as well as reduced proportions of backward and transitive associations compared to older controls. These findings are discussed within the hypothesis that the contextual representation, binding and/or retrieval processes are affected in prAD patients compared to healthy older individuals. (JINS, 2015, 21, 699–708)

Relatively few studies have examined the use of cognitive rehabilitation in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), largely due to the assumption that training will not improve functioning in patients with progressive conditions. Face-name association, an ecologically valid task, is both dependent on the explicit memory system and difficult for MCI patients. During three hour-long sessions, eight patients diagnosed with MCI were trained in the use of explicit memory strategies with 45 face-name pairs. For each pair, they were taught to visually identify a facial feature, link a phonological cue to that feature, and recall the associated name. There was significant improvement in recognition accuracy, along with faster reaction times, for trained face-name pairs. Improved accuracy persisted when tested one month after training. Significant, but less, improvement was also found on untrained stimuli, raising the possibility of generalization of training strategies. Preliminary results suggest strategy-based cognitive rehabilitation may be beneficial in patients with MCI, though these results must be replicated with a control group to rule out practice effects. (JINS, 2008, 14, 883–889.)

A learning matrix is defined by a set of input and output pattern vectors. The entries in these vectors are zeros and ones. The matrix is the maximum of the outer products of the input and output pattern vectors. The entries in the matrix are also zeros and ones. The product of this matrix with a selected input pattern vector defines an activity vector. It is shown that when the patterns are taken to be random, then there are central limit and large deviation theorems for the activity vector. They give conditions for when the activity vector may be used to reconstruct the output pattern vector corresponding to the selected input pattern vector.