Assesses impairments of verbal long-term memory and verbal learning ability that are often symptoms of neurological and psychiatric disorders. Verbal memory deficits may result from impairment of one or more of the four basic memory processes – encoding, storage, consolidation and retrieval. The AWLT scores these processes and is thus a key tool in the assessment of disorders in which verbal memory deficits are a defining characteristic (e.g. dementia of the Alzheimer’s type). The differentiated assessment of the various memory processes is also useful in connection with differential diagnosis issues.

A list of twelve words is read out four times. Immediately after each reading the respondent repeats as many words as possible. After a five-minute break, the respondent again repeats all the words that he/she can remember without hearing the word list again (short-term delayed recall). There is then a 20-minute break, after which the respondent is again asked to recall the words (long-term delayed recall). Finally, the respondent is shown a list containing the 12 learned words and 12 new words: he/she is asked to indicate which of these 24 words appeared on the original list of 12 that were learned.

S1: Standard form.

S2: Parallel form.

The following main variables are scored:

• Learning total.
• Short-term delayed recall.
• Long-term delayed recall.
• Recognition.