The effect of retrieval practice in AD and MCI
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The effect of retrieval practice on memory for lifelike events in adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s disease
IRAS ID
220475
Contact name
Taffy Bakasa
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Memory for events is impaired in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and we are interested in how memory might be improved. Specifically, our aim is to study the effects of retrieval practice, which means that after a participant watches a video, he/she is asked to repeatedly retrieve it from memory. Actively recalling the information is expected to result in better memory than simply studying it again. We compare this to videos which are restudied, where participants simply watch the video again.
A number of studies from our group have shown that retrieval practice is a powerful way of boosting memory for lifelike events that were shown in short video clips. Building on our previous work in healthy young adults, healthy older adults and patients with memory problems, we ask participants to watch and retrieve several short video clips. Half of the videos are then restudied, half of the videos are practiced through retrieval. Participants are asked to retrieve these videos at several time points to assess their long term memory (30 minutes later, 24 hours later). In addition they would be assessed with several short tests of memory and attention.
We would like to test patients who have received a recent diagnosis of MCI or early Alzheimer’s disease from their Memory Assessment Service clinic. Patients would be identified at the clinic and tested at the University of Sussex or in their own home.
We hope that the findings of the study will be important in developing techniques to improve memory for events in people with early dementia. If we can demonstrate that retrieval practice boosts memory for events in this population then there could be direct practical implications of this research for memory rehabilitation and for coping with memory loss in the context of degenerative diseases that cause dementia.REC name
London - Chelsea Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/LO/0561
Date of REC Opinion
24 Mar 2017
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion