Neuropsychological Study Of Source Memory

Objective To investigate the change of source and item memory cross the life-span of normal Chinese, and to find out the relationship between source memory and item memory in subjects with dysfunction of frontal lobe. To test the hypotheses that source memory and item memory are dissociated and the frontal lobe is involved in the source memory. Methods We set up a neuropsychological battery to measure the performance of item memory and source memory. 156 Chinese (normal children, 40; normal youth 40: normal middle aged. 36; normal elder Chinese 40 and schizophrenia, 40) were administrated with the battery. The performance of children , elder Chinese and schizophrenias was compared with the performance of 40 youth normal Chinese. The double dissociation between the performance of item memory and source memory was also analyzed within groups of children or elder Chinese. Results Across life span, children and youths are best, middle aged Chinese are worse, and elder Chinese are the worst in the performance of item memory. Otherwise, children are bad, youths are the best, middle-aged Chinese are worse, and elder Chinese are the worst in the performance of source memory. Compared with the youths, children have been significantly impaired in the performance of source memory in (p<0.001), but not in item memory. Elder Chinese has been significantly impaired in both item and source memory tasks (p<0.05; p<0.001. respectively), but more impaired in source than item memory task (p<0.001). Compared with the normal youths, the schizophrenics have been impaired in both item (p<0.05) and source memory tasks (p<0.001), and also more significantly impaired in source memory task (p<0.001). Double dissociation between performance of item and source memory was found within the groups...