Improving Face Recognition in Alcohol Dementia

The effects of differential outcomes and different types of consequential stimuli on 7-year-old children’s discriminative learning and memory

“…To our knowledge, this is the first time that such an effect has been reported in 7-year-old children. Some recent studies have shown that the DOP is effective in improving memory-based performance after short delays in normal aging, in young people, and in patients with alcohol-related amnesia and Alzheimer's disease (Hochhalter et al, 2000;López-Crespo et al, 2009;Martella et al, 2012;Plaza et al, 2011Plaza et al, , 2012. All these results can be explained according to the model suggested by Savage and colleagues (e.g., Overmier, Savage, & Sweeney, 1999;Ramirez, Buzzetti, & Savage, 2005;Savage, 2001;Savage & Parsons, 1997), who proposed that there are two different memory systems that are activated by differential and nondifferential outcomes.…”

“…Although the DOP has been shown to improve memory-based performance in animals (e.g., Brodigan & Peterson, 1976;DeMarse & Urcuioli, 1994;Savage & Langlais, 1995;Savage, Pitkin, & Careri, 1999), very few studies have explored this issue in humans. Hochhalter, Sweeney, Bakke, Holub, and Overmier (2000) demonstrated, for the first time, that specific outcomes improved recognition memory in people with memory problems. In fact, they found that three patients with alcohol-induced amnesia showed significantly better delayed face recognition when differential outcomes were arranged.…”

The differential outcomes procedure can overcome self-bias in perceptual matching

“…Finally, we note that DOP procedures have been used successfully to remediate a variety of learning problems, including those affecting patients with Korsakoff's syndrome (Hochhalter et al, 2000) and Alzheimer's disease . Similarly, self-reference effects have been shown to improve the memory of amnesic individuals .…”

“…The benefits of using the DOP also have been observed in people with discriminative learning difficulties, such as those with Down's syndrome (Estévez, Overmier, Fuentes, & González, 2003), adults with Prader-Willi syndrome (Joseph, Overmier, & Thompson, 1997), or children born prematurely (Martínez et al, 2012). Further studies have demonstrated that the DOP is effective at improving memory-based performance in healthy children (Martínez, Estévez, Fuentes, & Overmier, 2009;Martínez, Flores, González-Salinas, Fuentes, & Estévez, 2013), young adults (Martella, Plaza, Estevez, Castillo, & Fuentes, 2012;Plaza, Estévez, López-Crespo, & Fuentes, 2011), and older adults (López-Crespo, Plaza, Fuentes, & Estévez, 2009), as well as individuals with memory-based deficits, such as Korsakoff's syndrome (Hochhalter, Sweeney, Bakke, Holub, & Overmier, 2000) or Alzheimer's disease (Plaza, López-Crespo, Antúnez, Fuentes, & Estévez, 2012). It is of some interest to note that selfassociation has been shown to improve memory in patients with severe amnesia .…”

Enhancing recognition memory in adults through differential outcomes

“…In an extension to a clinical population of the work in an animal model of Korsakoff syndrome reported by Savage and Langlais (1995), Hochhalter, Sweeney, Bakke, Holub, and Overmier (2000), trained four patients with alcohol-related amnesia to recognize which of two faces matched a previously seen face. This task seems easy, but it is difficult for people with alcohol dementia due to their impaired short-term working memory.…”