Use of the historical present in the narratives of patients with hippocampal amnesia

<div> <div> <div> <div> <p>Kurczek, J. & Duff, M.C. (2013, November). Use of the historical present in the narratives of patients with hippocampal amnesia. <i>Poster presentation at the Society for Neuroscience Conference</i>, San Diego, CA.</p><p>Indeed, systematic study of the narratives of patients with memory impairments has been a powerful tool in documenting and characterizing the nature of declarative memory impairment in amnesia (e.g., Hassabis et al., 2007; Duff et al., 2007; Race et al., 2011; Duff & Kurczek, 2013). " </p> <p>Park and colleagues (2011) examined the use of the linguistic construct historical present (HP) in the narratives of individuals with unilateral TLE. Historical present is the use of a present tense verb when clearly referring to a past event. They found not only fewer instances of the HP in narratives of TLE patients in comparison to matched healthy participants, but also a relationship between HP and measures of recollection for past narratives. Thus, HP is thought to reflect the conscious experiencing of recollection." </p> <p>Here, we extend the study of the HP to the narratives of patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and, in addition narratives of past events, also examine narratives for future events. Based on work by Park and colleagues and our proposal that the hippocampus is a key contributor to language use and processing (Duff & Brown-Schmidt, 2012), we predict that hippocampal damage and relational memory impairment will disrupt the use of the HP in past and future narratives." </p> </div> </div> </div>