Figure 10.

(A) A delayed digit recall task using interference paradigms, based on Hatta et al. (1989). The patient was asked to recall a target digit sequence after a 15-s retention interval. Three different types of visual distractors were presented during the retention interval (pictures of abacus figures, human faces, or gray rectangles). (B) Behavioral performance in the delayed digit recall task. The number of correctly answered trials was 12 when a human face or a gray rectangle were presented as distractors. In contrast, the number of correctly answered trials was six when the distractor was pictures of abacus figures. This result indicated that the presentation of abacus figures interfered with the patient’s digit memory performance.