Memory error: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 02:42, 19 December 2019

Revision as of 18:14, 24 March 2020

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'''Personal life effects''' refer to the recall and belief in events as declared by family members or friends for having actually happened.<ref name="Laney">Laney, C., & Loftus, E.F. (2010). Truth in emotional memories. In B.H. Bornstein (Ed.), Emotion and the Law (pp. 157–183). Leicester: Springer Science + Business Media</ref> Personal life effects are largely based on suggestive influences from external sources, such as family members or a therapist.<ref name="Loftus"/> Other influential sources may include media or literature stories which involve details that are believed to have been experienced or witnessed, such as a natural disaster close to where one resides, or a situation that is common and could have occurred, such as getting lost as a child. Personal life effects are most powerful when claimed to be true by a family member, and even more powerful when a secondary source confirms the event having happened.<ref name="Loftus"/>

Personal life effects are believed to be a form of source confusion, in which the individual cannot recall where the memory is coming from.<ref name="Wade">Wade, K.A., & Garry, M. (2005). Strategies for verifying false autobiographical memories. ''American Journal of Psychology, 118''(4), 587–602</ref> Therefore, without being able to confirm the source of the memory, the individual may accept the false memory as true. Three factors may be responsible for the implantation of false [[Autobiographical memory|autobiographical memories]]. The first factor is time. As time passes, memories fade. Therefore, source confusion may result due to time delay.<ref name="Loftus"/> The second factor is the imagination inflation effect. As the amount of imagination increases, so does one’sone's familiarity for the contents of the imagination. Thus, source confusion may also occur due to the individual confusing the source of the memory for being true, when in fact it was imaginary.<ref name="Wade"/> Lastly, social pressure to recall the memory may affect the individual’sindividual's belief in the false memory. For example, with increase in pressure, the individual may lower their criteria for validating a memory, and come to accept a [[false memory]] for being true.<ref name="Wade"/> Personal life effects can be extremely crucial to recognize in cases of [[Recovered memory|recovered memories]], especially those of abuse, in which the individual may have been led to believe they had been abused as a child by a therapist during psychological therapy, when in fact they had not been. Personal life effects can also be important in witness testimonies, in which suggestions from authorities may incorrectly implant memories regarding witnesses a particular detail about a crime (see the '''Childhood Abuse''' and '''Eye Witness Testimony''' sections below).

==Memory error relating to food==

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===Alzheimer's Disease===

Alzheimer’sAlzheimer's Disease is characterized by progressive memory impairment and decline, usually beginning short-term memory.<ref>Baddeley, A.D., Bressi, S., Della Sala, S., Logie, R., & Spinnler, H. (1991). The decline of working memory in Alzheimer's disease. ''Brain, 114'', 2521–2542.</ref> As it is a progressive disease, Alzheimer’sAlzheimer's usually begins with memory errors before proceeding to long-term memory stores. One form of memory error occurs in contrast to the theory of retrieval cues in being a reason for the occurrence of memory errors. As noted above, memory errors may be due to the lack of cues that can trigger a memory trace and bring it to awareness. However, studies have shown that the opposite may be true for patients with Alzheimer’sAlzheimer's, such that cues may actually decrease perform on

[[Priming (psychology)|priming]] tasks.<ref name="Mimura">Mimura, M., & Komatsu, S.I. (2010). Factors of error and effort in memory intervention for patients with Alzheimer's disease and amnesic syndrome. ''Psychogeriatrics, 10'', 179–186.</ref> Patients also demonstrate errors known as misattribution errors, otherwise known as source confusion. However, studies show that these misattribution errors are dependent on whether the task is a familiarity or recollection task.<ref name="Mitchell">Mitchell, J.P., Sullivan, A.L., Schacter, D.L., & Budson, A.E. (2006). Misattribution errors in Alzheimer’s disease: The [[illusory truth effect]]. ''Neuropsychology, 20''(2), 185–192.</ref>

Although patients tend to exhibit a higher level of false recognitions than control groups,<ref name="Hildebrandt">Hildebrandt, H., Haldenwanger, A., & Eling, P. (2009). False recognition helps to distinguish patients with Alzheimer’s disease and amnesic mci from patients with other kinds of dementia. ''Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, 28''(2).</ref> researchers have shown that they may exhibit less false-recognition early in the test due to familiarity being slower to develop. However, the observation of increasing instances of misattribution errors can be seen once familiarity does occur.<ref name="Mitchell"/> This may be related to the retrieval cue speculation, in that familiar memories often contain cues we know, and thus may be the reason why familiarity can contribute to memory errors. Lastly, many studies have shown that Alzheimer’sAlzheimer's patients commonly suffer from intrusion errors. Relative to the findings that retrieval cues may actually hurt recall performance, one study by Kramer et al. showed that intrusions are most commonly associated with cue-recall tasks.<ref name="Kramer">Kramer, J.H., Delis, D.C., Blusewicz, M.J., & Brandt, J. (1988). Verbal memory errors in Alzheimer's and Huntington's dementias. ''Developmental Neuropsychology, 4''(1), 1–15.</ref> This study suggests that cues may lead to intrusions because patients may have a difficult time distinguishing between cues and distractions,<ref name="Kramer"/> which may help explain why cues increase memory errors in patients with Alzheimer’sAlzheimer's. Since verbal intrusions are a common aspect of Alzheimer's,<ref name="Kern">Kern, B.S., Gorp, W.G.V., Cummings, J.L., Brown, W.S., & Osato, S.S. (1992). Confabulation in Alzheimer's disease. ''Brain and Cognition, 19''(2), 172–182.</ref> some researchers believe that this characteristic may be helpful in the diagnosis of the disease.<ref name="Fuld">Fuld, P.A., Katzman, R., Davies, P., & Terry, R.D. (2004). Intrusions as a sign of Alzheimer dementia chemical and pathological verification. ''Annals of Neurology, 11''(2), 155–159.</ref>

===Depression===

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===Schizophrenia===

Memory errors, specifically intrusion errors and imagination inflation effects, have been found to occur in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Intrusion errors can commonly be found in the recall portion of a memory test when a participant includes items that were not on the original list that was presented.<ref name="fridberg">Fridberg, D.J., Brenner, A., & Lysaker, P.H. (2010). Verbal memory intrusions in schizophrenia: Associations with self-reflectivity, symptomatology, and neurocognition. ''Psychiatry Research, 179'', 6–11.</ref> These types of errors are linked to problems with self-monitoring, increased positive and disorganized symptoms (confusion within the brain), and poor executive functioning.<ref name="fridberg"/> Intrusion errors are found to be more likely in patients with positive [[Diagnosis of schizophrenia|schizophrenic symptoms]], which involve an excess of normal bodily functions (e.g. delusions), versus negative [[Diagnosis of schizophrenia|schizophrenic symptoms]], which involve a decrease in normal bodily functions (e.g. refusal to speak).<ref name= "brebion">Brébion, G., Amador, X., Smith, M.J., Malaspina, D., Sharif, Z. & Gorman, J.M. (1999). Opposite links of positive and negative symptomatology with memory errors in schizophrenia. ''Psychiatry Research, 88'', 15–24.</ref> Possible reasons for this are reduced function in the central executive of the working memory, as well as defects in self-reflectivity, organization and reasoning. Self-reflectivity is the ability to recognize and reason about one’sone's own thought process, recognize that one has thoughts, and that those thoughts are one’sone's own and differentiate between [[cognitive operations]].<ref name="fridberg"/> Self-reflectivity has been shown to be one of the biggest deficits faced by schizophrenics and data suggests that verbal memory intrusions are linked to deficits in the ability to identify, organize, and reason about one's own thoughts in patients with schizophrenia.<ref name="fridberg"/>

Imagination inflation effects were also common memory errors in patients with schizophrenia. This effect refers to events that individuals have imagined so vividly in their minds that this adds belief to the fact that the event truly occurred, although it did not. Possible reasons for this are increased source confusion and/or decreased source recollection of an event, which shows poor use of [[Source-monitoring error|source-monitoring processes]].<ref name="mammarella">Mammarella, N., Altamura M., Padalino F.A., Petito A., Fairfield B. & Bellomo A. (2010). False memories in schizophrenia? An imagination inflation study. ''Psychiatry Research, 179'', 267–273.</ref> Source-monitoring processes allow one to distinguish between a memory that we may believe has happened because it seems familiar and one that has truly occurred. In the case of schizophrenics, whose abilities to reason through their thoughts is impaired, something that they have imagined and thus, seems familiar can easily be mistaken for an actual event, especially in the case of quick [[Heuristic|heuristic processes]] and snap judgments.<ref name="mammarella"/> Continuously imagining an action or event makes this action more and more familiar thus making it harder for a patient with schizophrenia to distinguish its source, questioning whether it is familiar because they have imagined it or if it is familiar because it happened. This leads to many memory errors for these individuals who are led to believe by their imagination of the event that it is real, has occurred and thus is stored in their memory for that reason.<ref name="mammarella"/>