Generation effect in short-term verbal and visuospatial memory: comparisons between dementia of Alzheimer type and dementia of frontal lobe type.

Memory deficit is the predominant presenting symptom in dementia. To compare short-term memory (STM) deficit in early dementia of Alzheimer type (DAT) vs frontal lobe type (DFT), and determine the residual memory capacity for stimulation, the generation effect (the memory advantage of items generated rather than read) was tested on verbal and visuospatial STM in patients with DAT (n = 10), DFT (n = 9) and in age-matched normal controls (n = 12). The generation effect enhanced performance in all groups. However, the profile of STM deficit differed in the two dementias: verbal and visuospatial memory were both decreased in DAT vs verbal memory only in DFT. These results provide a further criterion for differentiating between DAT and DFT, and show that memory performance can be enhanced in early dementia using techniques such as the generation effect.