  Recently it was shown explicitly that free recall consists of two stages: the
first few recalls empty working memory (narrowly defined) and a second stage, a
reactivation stage, concludes the recall (Tarnow, 2015). It was also shown that
the serial position curve changes in mild Alzheimer's disease, lowered total
recall and lessened primacy, are similar to second stage recall and different
from recall from working memory. The Tarnow Unchunkable Test (TUT, Tarnow,
2013) uses double integer items to separate out only the first stage, the
emptying of working memory, by making it difficult to reactivate items due to
the lack of intra-item relationships. Here it is shown that subject TUT selects
out diagnosed Alzheimer's Disease but not MCI. On average, diagnosed
Alzheimer's Disease is correlated with a loss of 0.7 memory slots (out of an
average of 2.7 slots). The identification of a lost memory slot may have
implications for improved stage definitions of Alzheimer's disease and for
remediation therapy via working memory capacity management. In conjunction with
the Alzheimer's disease process map, it may also be useful to identify the
exact location of working memory.
