Incidental and deliberate memory for words and faces after focal cerebral lesions.

It was predicted that right-hemisphere lesions cause a more marked deficit of shallow incidental memory than deep incidental or deliberate memory, the degree of the deficits being reversed after left-hemisphere lesions. This hypothesis was studied by measuring memory for words and faces in brain-damaged patients and nine controls after: shallow incidental learning, i.e. detecting words containing the letter 'A' and counting male and female faces; deep incidental learning, i.e. detecting words that mean man-made things and searching for well-known faces; and deliberate learning of words and faces. The results failed to support the hypothesis, but were consistent with the well-established finding that left- and right-hemisphere lesions disturb memory for words and faces, respectively.