Question:

For the Final Project, you will write a 7-page research paper (not including title page and references) that demonstrates your mastery of the major concepts that the course covers as they relate to an issue or area of study in cognitive psychology.

Although your research paper may cover a topic of interest to you, please regard it as a scholarly endeavor to which you are applying your research, statistical, and analytical skills, as well as your knowledge of cognitive psychology. This Application also requires you to provide an annotated bibliography of five references that you intend to use in your paper.

Answer:

Title: Cognitive neuropsychology of false memories

Annotated bibliography

1. Kopelman, M. (1999) Varieties of false memory, Cognitive Neuropsychology, 16(3), 197-214.

This paper reviews the characteristics and the mechanisms that underlie the manifestation of false memories. These characteristics include false recognition cases, spontaneous confabulation among people with brain disease, delusional memories, false recognition cases, and instances of psychosis-related delusions. The specific issues addressed in the paper include false confessions, distorted memories in the cases of child abuse, acquisition of new identities, multiple personality, pseudologia fantastica, and momentary confabulation.

The author suggests all these ought to be regarded as different categories of false memory. He also proposes that delusions and confabulations need to be considered distinct elements from a conceptual perspective. Nevertheless, the author posits that it is possible to wrap them up together within the general model of memory and executive functions. The only condition for this situation is that social factors are embedded into the model.

2. Dab, S., Claes, T., Morais, J. & Shallice, T. (1999) Confabulation with a selective descriptor process impairment, Cognitive Neuropsychology, 16(3), 215-242.

This article describes the confabulation process as an outcome of deficit in either the memory verification processes alone or in both the memory search and verification processes. The author studies a patient, who, unlike other patients, had experienced confabulations but also preserved all his preserved abilities of memory verification. In the search processes, only a selective impairment was observed. On the other hand, there was preservation of recognition abilities in addition to the fact that he did much better in cued recall than in free recall. The author concludes that verification impairment, whether it is specific to memory or not, is not a core component of an individual’s confabulations.

3. Johnson, M. & Raye, C. (1998) False memories and confabulation, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2(4), 137–145.

Johnson & Raye (1998) provide clear explanations of memory distortions, true memories, and false memories. They provide clear examples of all these concepts as well as empirical evidence and theoretical ideas underlying these explanations, particularly source monitoring processes. Confabulations are also explained as profound source confusions, in the context of brain damage. Neuro-imaging techniques are explored as sources of new evidence on brain mechanisms as well as processes of evaluating memories. A hypothesis on the role of the right prefrontal cortex in sub-serving heuristic judgments is used as a basis for exploring the disruptions caused by brain damage.

4. Zaragoza, M., Payment, K., Ackil, J. Drivdahl, S. & Beck, M. (2001) Interviewing Witnesses: Forced Confabulation and Confirmatory Feedback Increase False Memories, Psychological Science, 12(6), 473-477.

This paper describes two experiments conducted on adults who experienced a videotaped event. Later on, they participated in face-to-face interviews thereby forcing them to confabulate about information regarding what they had previously experienced. The aim was to explore the role of social-motivational factors in promoting the existence of false memories. Some of the confabulated responses of the participants were reinforced with a confirmatory feedback while for others, a neutral feedback was provided. After one week, the adults had developed false memories for all the events they had knowingly confabulated on earlier on. False memory was dramatically increased by confirmatory feedback. The experiment proved that the development of false memories is greatly motivated by social-motivational factors.

5. Schnider, A. (2003) Spontaneous confabulation and the adaptation of thought to ongoing reality, Neuroscience, 4(1), 662-671.

This study is a review of studies on confabulations, which the author defines as a tendency to produce fictitious stories.  The studies reviewed show that spontaneous confabulation is a disorder in which the individual is unable to adapt behavior and thought to the existing reality, such that the individual acts according to memories that are presently inappropriate. The author concludes that on the basis of these studies, the process through which ongoing reality is monitored could be a capacity of the reward system of the brain.

6. Mendez, M. & Fras, I. (2011) The false memory syndrome: Experimental studies and comparison to confabulations, Medical Hypotheses, 76(4), 492–496.

In this paper, focus is on the false memory syndrome. False memories are identified as factually incorrect recollections that are strongly believed. The paper alludes to the confusion that exists among neurologists and psychiatrists with regard to this subject. On the basis of recent experimental investigations, a model for these false memories is proposed.

7. Schacter, D. (1997) False memories and aging, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 1(6), 229–236.

The author in this paper associates aging with increased vulnerability to false memories and recollections. Evidence on this susceptibility is reviewed. The data obtained shows that older adults tend to have special difficulties of recollection of sources of information more frequently. This renders them to imagined and perceived experiences that are confusing as well as different types of memory distortions.

 

Introduction

There is confusion and disagreements among psychiatrists and neuroscientists regarding the nature of false memories. In this regard, two terms appear to be used interchangeably ‘false memories’ and ‘confabulations’. This paper focuses on contemporary research trends in the field of cognitive neuropsychology of false memories. In this regard, the main aspects covered include the characteristics of false memory, varieties of false memory, susceptibility to false memories and confabulations, impairments and disorders associated with false memories, the aging factor, and experimental studies on the socio-motivational factors influencing false memories.

Characteristics of false memory: A Cognitive neuropsychological perspective

Quite a few studies have been done on the characteristics of false memory. This is especially the case with regard to experimental studies. Kopelman (1999) identifies the characteristics of false memory as false recognition cases, spontaneous confabulation among people with brain disease, delusional memories, false recognition cases, and instances of psychosis-related delusions. Kopelman goes on to discuss specific aspects of these characteristics, such as false confessions, distorted memories in the cases of child abuse, acquisition of new identities, multiple personality, pseudologia fantastica, and momentary confabulation. According to Kopelman (1999) these characteristics can be used as a basis of determining different categories of false memory. On the basis of this argument, it is also plausible to differentiate between aspects of confabulations and delusions in order to emphasize all the appropriate conceptual perspectives that underlie the use of these terms.

In many cases, researchers who set out to explore the notion of false memory end up wandering to cover the issue of confabulation (Parkin, 1997). This is a problem that Dab, Claes, Morais, & Shallice (1999) encountered in their study. In this study, the best way of explaining confabulation, it emerged, was through the processes of memory search and verification. This is one of the few studies in which the researcher adopts an experimental perspective by studying a patient in a real-life situation. Issues of free recall and cued recall take center stage in the explanation of how cognitive abilities are preserved in order to deal with selective impairment, consequently preventing false memories from being experienced.

In other studies, researchers attempt to establish differences between false memories and confabulation. In Johnson & Raye (1998), for example, a confabulation is explored in the context of brain damage that leads to source confusion. In contrast, false memories are explored in the context of source monitoring processes. Johnson & Raye (1998) suggest the use of neuro-imaging techniques as crucial sources of information on the brain mechanisms that are normally used to evaluate memories. This would ideally entail the use of heuristic judgments in the right prefrontal cortex to determine the disruptions that could have been caused by brain damage.

In a different study, Mendez & Fras (2011) embark on a similar undertaking, with the main difference being the use of an experimental perspective. Mendez and Fras (2011) use the term ‘false memory syndrome’. According to Mendez & Fras, the notion of ‘false memory’ can best be understood if an appropriate model for this area of neuropsychology is conceptualized. However, this is an issue upon which neuropsychologists and psychiatrists are yet to come to a consensus.

For other researchers, a more pragmatic approach is preferred. For instance, Kubota (2006) contends that prefrontal hemodynamic activity can be used to predict false memory. Kubota bases his argument on lesion studies, which indicate that the pre-frontal cortex (PFC) plays a key role in the episodic memory’s reconstructive processes. Such reconstructive processes have a direct impact the likelihood of memory distortion. This finding seems similar to the one reported by Johnson & Raye (1998) in an aforementioned study. However, Kubota’s studies moves one more step ahead by delving into the results of functional imaging studies, which show a close link between the function of the PFC whenever individuals are illusorily recollecting non-experienced events. Kubota (2006) refers to functional imaging studies to determine the involvement of PFC in illusory recollection of events that were never experienced.

Indeed, a question that continues to linger in the minds of many neuropsychologists and psychiatrists is on the research paradigms that should be used in the study of false memory (Pezdek, 2007). In the case of Kubota (2006), the preferred method is an NIRS (near-infrared spectroscopy) system, which is used to monitor PFC hemodynamics in real time as subjects embark on a task of studying world lists while at the same time recognizing unstudied items. By recognizing unstudied items, subjects are said to be engaging in false recognition. This is a highly complicated experiment, which entails such subtle aspects as the observation of oxygenated hemoglobin concentration (during false recognition) (Kubota, 2006).

According to Pezdek (2007), some of the methodologies that cognitive psychologists use to study false memory can lead to scientific progress. However, others and grossly inappropriate and can only constrain the conclusions that are reached by researchers. In a review of 198 articles published on the subject of ‘false memory’, Pezdek (2007) found out that a false memory research bandwagon appears to have been shaping up between the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, the disappointing finding was that only about 13% of the articles contained frameworks of studying false memory in the manner in which the concept was originally intended. The meaning that was originally intended, in this case, was ‘planting of memory for an event that is entirely new and which has never been experienced in the lifetime of the individual. For some reason, Pezdek’s recommendations for further research point out to the authenticity child sexual abuse memories and the generalization of research on entirely new events in the child’s memory.

Other than methodological conceptions of false memories, there is also an ongoing debate on theories of false memory among adults and children. In this regard, Reyna (1997) observes that from the studies that have already been carried out on the effects of false memory, most of the findings are robustly replicable, although some constraints can be discerned. Reyna gives the example of the possibility of inducing people to falsely remember having witnessed events that they have never experienced. For example, an individual may be induced into having seen a ‘no-parking’ sign instead of a ‘stop’ sign. In the current literature, scholars are engaged in the search for the origin of such amazing effects, how false memories tend to occur, and how they can be minimized. The whole issue of predicting and preventing false memories can best be addressed during the theory development process.

A case in point of how individuals can be induced into experiencing false memories is the two experiments that Zaragoza, Payment, Ackil, Drivdahl, & Beck (2001) carried out. In these experiments, the participating adults experienced a videotaped event. Soon afterwards, they were subjected to face-to-face interviews, a situation that forced them to confabulate about some of the information relating to what they had experienced in the event. The researchers reinforced some of the confabulated responses from the participants while for others, they provided the participants with a neutral feedback. One week later, the adults could not help forming false memories for all the events they had confabulated about earlier on. In the confabulations where a confirmatory feedback had been provided, the false memory was dramatically increased. These experiments proved that social-motivational factors play a crucial role in motivating people to develop false memories.

Other than forced confabulation, there is also abundance of research on spontaneous confabulation (Schnider, 2003). In Schnider’s study, a review is made on studies that focus on confabulations, with spontaneous confabulation being considered a disorder in which one fails to adapt his behavior and thinking processes to the already existing reality. This, according to Schnider, has something to do with the reward system of the individual’s brain.

Some studies portray a close relationship between aging on the one hand and spontaneous confabulation and false memories on the other (Schacter, 1997, Brainerd, 2010). However, there are many gaps in this line of research, particularly considering that older adults are only seen to have difficulties in identifying the sources of the information that they already have (Kensinge, 1999). It is not necessarily a must that these are instances of false memories.

This argument is supported by Dennis (2007), who argues that naturally, memories are not exact recollections of human experiences. Therefore, it is easy for one to be inaccurate, to distort information, or to experience complete memory failure. While wandering from the core issue, Dennis adds that it is not clear what role sleep plays in the development of false memories.

The issue of aging closely relates to the more far-reaching debate on the causes of false memories. For some researchers, it is caused by wishful reality distortions (Fotopoulou, 2004). For others, it is caused by overreliance on familiarity and other mental heuristic processes when making judgments (Strange, 2011). According to Fotopoulou (2004), it is rare for the content of confabulation to be considered motivationally neutral. In most cases, this content appears to ‘improve’ the world that the patient is experiencing. One may notice efforts by the patient to make the information more pleasant than in reality depending on the demands of the situation.

Research done by Dodson shows that reduction of false memories is an excellent way of ensuring that individuals escape from illusions in their lives. This is an important undertaking considering that illusory memories are both common and unsettling. Illusory memories, though, occur when some particular form of memory exists but has been attributed to the wrong place, time, and source. This delineation of a new conception in the discourse on false memories has far-reaching theoretical and practical implications by virtue of revealing more research gaps.

Regarding false memories and reliance on familiarity, Strange (2011) observes that seemingly innocuous photos accompanying false news events may induce people into generating false memories about these news events. This view is supported by de Vito (2009), who argues that in many real-world situations, collective representations can easily elicit individual false memories.

In other studies, focus is on the relationship between false memories and specific conditions. For example, Mammarella (2010) explores false memories among individuals with schizophrenia. The research provided mixed results on the level of susceptibility to false memories among schizophrenic individuals. However, from Mammarella’s analysis, it is clear that no studies have been carried out regarding schizophrenic individuals’ vulnerability to the effects of imagination inflation. Nevertheless, just like Johnson & Raye (1998), Mammarella attributes false memories to poor use of processes of source monitoring.

However, although many neuropsychologists are optimistic about the direction of false memories research, others take a skeptical stance. A case in point is Wade (2007), who claims that majority of the research that has been carried out on false memories, is misguided, particularly when evaluated from the perspective of the tenets of cognition and consciousness. The three core areas where errors are said to have occurred include misuse of the notion of ‘false memory’, reliance on inappropriate methodologies, and misapplication of research on false memory to real-world situations. Wade concludes that researchers should be keen to avoid misusing the term ‘false memories, applying the wrong methodologies, or applying findings inappropriately in real-world situations.

Conclusion

In summary, there are many areas of research contention on the subject of ‘false memories’. There is lack of coherence among researchers, such that it is difficult to identify a clear research trend. For instance, whereas some researchers use the terms ‘false memories’, ‘confabulations’, ‘delusions’, and ‘illusions’ interchangeably. It is also increasingly common for some neuropsychologists to associate false memories with old age. Nevertheless, there is consensus on other aspects of this concept, for example its characteristics and the tendency by victims of false memories to make the information more pleasant than in reality and to present a more positive version of the world, all depending on the demands of the situation.

 

References

Brainerd, C. (2010) Developmental reversals in false memory: Effects of emotional valence and arousal, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 107(2), 137–154.

Dab, S., Claes, T., Morais, J. & Shallice, T. (1999) Confabulation with a selective descriptor process impairment, Cognitive Neuropsychology, 16(3), 215-242.

de Vito, S. (2009) Collective representations elicit widespread individual false memories, Cortex, 45(5) 686–687.

Dennis, N. (2007) Effects of aging on true and false memory formation: An fMRI study, Neuropsychologia, 45(14), 3157–3166.

Dodson, C. (2000) Escape from illusion: reducing false memories, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(10), 391–397.

Fotopoulou, A. (2004) Wishful reality distortions in confabulation: a case report, Neuropsychologia, 42(6), 727–744

Johnson, M. & Raye, C. (1998) False memories and confabulation, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2(4), 137–145.

Kensinge, E. (1999) When True Memories Suppress False Memories: Effects of Ageing, Cognitive Neuropsychology, 16(3), 399-415.

Kopelman, M. (1999) Varieties of false memory, Cognitive Neuropsychology, 16(3), 197-214.

Kubota, Y. (2006) Prefrontal hemodynamic activity predicts false memory—A near-infrared spectroscopy study, NeuroImage, 31(4), 1783–1789.

Mammarella, N. (2010) False memories in schizophrenia? An imagination inflation study, Psychiatry Research, 179(3), 267–273.

Mendez, M. & Fras, I. (2011) The false memory syndrome: Experimental studies and comparison to confabulations, Medical Hypotheses, 76(4), 492–496.

Parkin, A. (1997) The neuropsychology of false memory, Learning and Individual Differences, 9(4), 341–357.

Pezdek, K. (2007) What research paradigms have cognitive psychologists used to study “False memory,” and what are the implications of these choices? Consciousness and Cognition, 16(1), 2–17.

Reyna, V. (1997) Theories of false memory in children and adults, Learning and Individual Differences, 9(2), 95–123.

Schacter, D.  (1997) False memories and aging, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 1(6), 229–236.

Schnider, A. (2003) Spontaneous confabulation and the adaptation of thought to ongoing reality, Neuroscience, 4(1), 662-671.

Strange, D. (2011) Photographs cause false memories for the news, Acta Psychologica, 136(1), 90–94.

Wade, K. (2007) False claims about false memory research, Consciousness and Cognition, 16(1), 18–28.

Zaragoza, M., Payment, K., Ackil, J. Drivdahl, S. & Beck, M. (2001) Interviewing Witnesses: Forced Confabulation and Confirmatory Feedback Increase False Memories, Psychological Science, 12(6), 473-477.