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“Memory Function” in Psychiatric Patients Over Sixty, the Role of Memory in Tests Discriminating Between “Functional” and “Organic” Groups

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

J. Inglis
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, Maudsley Hospital, London
M. B. Shapiro
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, Maudsley Hospital, London
F. Post
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, Maudsley Hospital, London

Extract

This paper reports part of a research into the relationship of certain aspects of mental functioning and the psychiatric illnesses of old age. One of the apparent deficits of function to which much importance has been attached is “memory impairment”. This is commonly considered part of various clinical syndromes, especially of the “organic” mental disorder of the senium. The measurement or estimation of memory function is, therefore, thought to be of considerable importance and most clinicians working with elderly patients use some kinds of tests which purport to measure it. There are, however, some points of conflict between clinical usage and the evidence of objective investigations in this area. It has never, for example, been demonstrated in relation to memory assessment that “memory” as such, can usefully be considered as even relatively independent of intelligence in young normal adult subjects (Eysenck and Halstead (1)).

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1956 

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References

Eysenck, H. J., and Halstead, H., “The Memory Function. I. A factorial study of fifteen clinical tests,” Amer. J. Psychiat., 1945, 102, 174180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Shapiro, M. B., Post, F., Lofving, B., and Inglis, J., “'Memory Function’ in Psychiatric Patients Over 60, Some Methodological and Diagnostic Implications,” J. Ment. Sci., 1956, 102, 233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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