A patient with a specific form of amnesia is repeatedly asked to solve a complex mechanical puzzle over several days. Each day, the patient claims to have never seen the puzzle before and has no memory of the previous practice sessions. However, with each new session, the time it takes them to solve the puzzle consistently decreases. Based on this scenario, identify which of the two major long-term memory systems appears to be impaired and which appears to be intact. Justify your answer by explaining how the patient's behavior demonstrates the function of each system.

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Research surrounding memory in neuroscience demonstrated a difference between declarative and procedural memory. Studies demonstrated the ability among amnesiacs to learn visuomotor skills, although they could not recall recent happenings that included the learning of the skills. Amnesiacs also demonstrate repetition priming—increased ability to recognize a stimulus when it was encountered previously. Cohen and Squire conclude that amnesiacs’ ability to learn a task is dependent upon the information involved. They view amnesiacs as struggling with declarative memory—which requires recall of specific material—while retaining procedural memory—which is used to perform procedures.

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