Introduction

There is little doubt that cognitive psychology has made a great contribution to the study of organic amnesia. Most of the published investigations of amnesia during the past 15 years have involved the application of cognitive concepts or theories to the severe memory disorders of patients with diencephalic or medial temporal lobe dysfunction. Theories stressing the distinction between episodic and semantic memory, the role of proactive interference in retrieval processes, and failures in encoding have all been thoroughly explored, with their limitations as well as their utility as heuristic models for guiding amnesia research duly recorded (for reviews, see Butters & Cermak, 1980; Hirst, 1982; Piercy, 1977; Squire, 1982).

This reliance upon a field that clearly emphasizes memory for recently acquired information (usually learned in the laboratory) has resulted in a disproportionate emphasis on anterograde rather than retrograde amnesia (RA). Most of the reported studies since 1970 have been concerned with information-processing deficits underlying amnesic patients' inability to learn new information presented subsequent to the onset of their amnesia (i.e., anterograde amnesia). Relatively few studies have been concerned with the amnesics' diminished ability to recall events and information learned prior to the onset of their neurological disorder (i.e., retrograde amnesia). Those that have been reported are generally more concerned with delineating the severity and duration of this impairment than with describing the cognitive processes that might contribute to the disorder.