Abstract
The case of a left-temporally damaged patient with impairment of verbal memory span is reported. The patient was a 21-year-old right-handed female. On admission, she was alert and oriented to all spheres. She spoke fluently without paraphasia, and her naming, comprehension, writing and reading abilities were excellent. Her language performance showed no signs of aphasia. She exhibited neither apraxia nor agnosia, and her intellectual abilities were well preserved.
One striking finding was that her digit span score was four. Her sentence repeating ability was preserved but repetition of nonsense syllables was profoundly disturbed. Further neuropsychological study revealed dissociations between short-term and long-term verbal memory, and between verbal and non-verbal short-term memory. Both dissociations may be attributed to a selective deficit in verbal short-term memory.
In parallel, we also present the case of a patient who developed conduction aphasia at the time of onset but who thereafter had only minimal aphasia although disturbances of digit span and repeating ability remained. We then compare these cases with previously reported cases of selective impairment of short-term memory.
Among these cases, we found differences in repeating and comprehension abilities. The above-mentioned findings suggest that these differences derive from aphasia. We further discuss the purity of impairment of verbal short-term memory.
