Fast, but not slow, familiarity is preserved in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment

This dissociation within familiarity suggests that a very basic component of declarative memory, probably at the interface between implicit and explicit memory, may be preserved, or possibly released, in patients with aMCI. It is suggested that early subprocesses (e.g., fluency based familiarity) could be preserved in aMCI patients, while delayed ones (e.g., conceptual fluency, post-retrieval monitoring, confidence assessment, or even access to awareness) may be impaired. These findings may provide support for recent suggestions that familiarity may result from the combination of a set of subprocesses, each with its specific temporal signature.