It has been suggested that the memory disorder in human organic amnesia might be caused by the slow processing of information. Such slowness might be differentially greater for semantic tasks, and/or for tasks requiring the extraction of multiple features of stimuli, or it might simply be a non-specific slowing. These possibilities were tested in a group of alcoholic amnesics and matched normal controls by presenting subjects with a series of words and requiring them to identify one specified word or one of two specified words, or membership of a specified category or one of two specified categories. Although amnesics' reaction times were slightly slower than controls' the effect was insignificant, and there was no hint of differential slowing in the semantic or multiple processing tasks. It was concluded from these results and a consideration of the reaction time literature that cognitive slowness is unrelated to the main cause of amnesia.
