Melissa Bowen University of Exeter: October 2008

The objective of the present study was to investigate how effective the use of an automatic camera, SenseCam, could be as an autobiographical memory aid for a 36 year old female patient presenting with medial temporal lobe damage and severe anterograde amnesia. The patient (CB) took part in an activity and was then given free recall and cued recall questions of varying specificity to assess memory for the event. Testing was carried out immediately and after delays of 5mins; 10 mins; 15 mins; and 20 mins. After each test CB was asked to either view SenseCam images of the event, to listen to an audio recording of the event or no remediation technique was used. It was hypothesised that CB would be able to recall general, moderately specific and very specific information about each event more effectively when using SenseCam as a memory aid compared with audio recordings or no remediation technique at all. The results showed that SenseCam led to significantly better free recall as well as cued recall on the general questions, compared to the baseline condition. However there were no significant differences between the three conditions on cued recall of moderately specific or very specific information. Furthermore, audio recordings of the event did not appear to improve recall performance whatever the specificity of the questions asked. Finally, as would be expected the overall effect of delay on recall performance was found to be significant across all three remediation conditions and all three question specificities. The possible reasons for these findings and the implications they may have within this field of research are discussed.