An analysis of Korsakoff patients recall following varying types of distractor activity.

Ten alcoholic Korsakoff patients and ten alcoholic control subjects were given several short-term memory, distractor type tasks in which consonant trigrams (verbal) and random shapes (nonverbal) were employed as the to-be-retained materials. The Korsakoff patients demonstrated a severe verbal memory deficit when the retention interval was filled with verbal distractor activity, but their retention of the same verbal material was intact when a nonverbal distractor task was used. In contrast, the Korsakoff patients' retention of nonverbal material was impaired regardless of the nature of the distractor activity. In fact, their retention of nonverbal material was impaired even when an unfilled retention interval was used.