The reduced ability to remember information acquired after the onset of…
2024
The reduced ability to remember information acquired after the onset of amnesia is known as:
Answer: D. Anterograde amnesia — ConceptAmnesia is classified by the temporal direction of the memory deficit relative to the onset event — the injury, illness, or trauma that triggers it.…
- A.
Working memory
- B.
Retrograde amnesia
- C.
Phonological loop
- D.
Anterograde amnesia
Attempted by 3 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
Concept
Amnesia is classified by the temporal direction of the memory deficit relative to the onset event — the injury, illness, or trauma that triggers it. The Latin prefixes carry that direction: retro- means backward, toward the period before onset, while antero- means forward, toward the period after onset. Every item of this kind therefore reduces to a single test: does the deficit affect material that was already encoded before onset, or material encountered after onset?
A second family of terms — working memory and its subsystems — comes from the Baddeley and Hitch model of normal short-term storage and rehearsal. Those terms describe the architecture of intact cognition: capacity is counted in items or chunks, while retention and rehearsal operate on a scale of seconds. They do not name a span of memory lost around a clinical event.
Applying it here
The stem specifies information acquired after the onset of amnesia. Acquisition after onset is new learning, so the deficit lies in the forward direction: from the moment of onset the person can no longer lay down new long-term memories. What the term fixes is the direction of the impairment — new learning from onset onward — rather than any claim about access to material consolidated earlier, which a separate retrograde deficit may or may not also affect. The disorder defined by that forward-directed failure of new memory formation is anterograde amnesia. Its classic illustration is patient H.M., who after bilateral medial-temporal surgery retained his childhood memories but could not form new lasting episodic memories.
Cross-check against the other terms
Term | What it names | Span affected relative to onset |
|---|---|---|
Anterograde amnesia | Clinical failure to form new long-term memories | Period after onset |
Retrograde amnesia | Clinical loss of access to already-stored memories | Period before onset |
Working memory | Limited-capacity system holding and manipulating current information | No clinical span; seconds-scale normal processing |
Phonological loop | Speech-based rehearsal subsystem of working memory | No clinical span; seconds-scale normal processing |
Because the stem fixes the affected material as what was acquired after onset, the forward-directed disorder — anterograde amnesia — is the answer.