Which memory pattern is described as involving bilateral frontal/temporal regions with poor encoding and cueing not helpful, including perseverations and false positives?

• A. Mem pattern in frontal lobe dysfunction
• B. Mem pattern in severe AD
• C. Mem pattern in mild/mod AD
• D. Normal memory

Answer: (A)

Frontal lobe dysfunction is the memory pattern described. When the frontal lobes are impaired, encoding relies less on organized strategies and more on spontaneous, inefficient methods, so new information isn’t encoded well. Because the problem lies in strategic retrieval and monitoring, external cueing doesn’t substantially help, as the bottleneck is in how the person searches and regulates responses rather than in storing the memories themselves. Perseverations reflect a failure to shift or suppress habitual responses, a hallmark of frontal damage, while false positives reveal impaired inhibitory control and source monitoring. This pattern helps distinguish frontal dysfunction from Alzheimer-type patterns, where cueing can often aid retrieval and perseverations are less characteristic, and from normal memory, which would lack these disruptive retrieval and monitoring features.