Trends in Cognitive Sciences
ReviewMemory distortion: an adaptive perspective
Section snippets
Are memory distortions the reflection of deficient cognitive processing?
It is now widely recognized that human memory is not an exact reproduction of past experiences but is instead an imperfect process that is prone to various kinds of errors and distortions. Studies of memory distortion have a long history in both theoretical and applied cognitive psychology 1, 2, 3. However, they have become even more prominent during the past two decades as a result of increased awareness that memory errors associated with eyewitness misidentification frequently contribute to
Imagination inflation
Imagination inflation occurs when imagining a novel event leads people to i) increase their confidence or belief that the event actually occurred in their personal pasts [23]; ii) claim that they performed an action or perceived an object that they only imagined [24]; or iii) develop a full-blown false recollection of an experience that did not occur [25]. To attribute such effects specifically to imagination, it is important to control for other forms of exposure to novel information. For
Gist-based and associative memory errors
Gist-based memory errors occur when people falsely recall or recognize a novel word, picture or other type of item that is either perceptually or conceptually related to an item that they did encounter previously: people fail to recollect specific details of an experience and instead remember general information or the gist of what happened 1, 45 (see Box 1).
Associative memory errors occur when people falsely recall or recognize a novel item that is an associate of previously studied items [17]
Post-event misinformation
In the post-event misinformation paradigm, providing erroneous information following the initial encoding of an event increases subsequent endorsement of that information on a later memory test for the original event. Numerous cognitive studies during the past four decades have delineated the conditions under which misinformation effects are observed (for a review see [61]).
More recently, functional neuroimaging studies of the misinformation paradigm have revealed that many of the same brain
Concluding remarks
In this article we have reviewed evidence that supports an adaptive interpretation of three kinds of memory distortions: imagination inflation, gist-based and associative memory errors, and post-event misinformation. However, we do not wish to imply that our list is exhaustive. For example, studies by Ross and Wilson have documented that people frequently remember their pasts in an overly positive or negative manner in order to inflate their current self-evaluation, which can have beneficial
Acknowledgements
This paper was supported by National Institute of Mental Health MH060941 (DLS), NRSA AG034699 (SAG), and NRSA AG038079 and a L’Oreal USA for Women in Science Fellowship (PLS). We thank Clifford Robbins for help with preparation of the manuscript, and Donna Addis, Brendan Gaesser, Kathy Gerlach, Angela Gutchess, and Karl Szpunar for comments on an earlier draft of the article.
References (100)
- et al.
The cognitive neuroscience of memory distortion
Neuron
(2004) Disordered memory awareness: recollective confabulation in two cases of persistent deja vecu
Neuropsychologia
(2005)- et al.
On the susceptibility of adaptive memory to false memory illusions
Cognition
(2010) - et al.
Emotional content and reality monitoring ability: fMRI evidence for the influences of encoding processes
Neuropsychologia
(2005) Constructive episodic simulation of the future and the past: distinct subsystems of a core brain network mediate imagining and remembering
Neuropsychologia
(2009)- et al.
Gist-based false recognition of pictures in older and younger adults
J. Mem. Lang.
(1997) Prefrontal hemodynamic activity predicts false memory: a near-infrared spectroscopy study
NeuroImage
(2006)The neural origins of specific and general memory: the role of the fusiform cortex
Neuropsychologia
(2005)A brighter side to memory illusions: False memories prime children's and adults’ insight-based problem solving
J. Exp. Child Psychol.
(2011)Convergent, but not divergent, thinking predicts susceptibility to associative memory illusions
Pers. Indiv. Differ.
(2011)
Reconsolidation: maintaining memory relevance
Trends Neurosci.
Memory and the self
J. Mem. Lang.
The proactive brain: Using analogies and associations to generate predictions
Trends Cogn. Sci.
Cortical analysis of visual context
Neuron
Memory consolidation and reconsolidation: what is the role of sleep?
Trends Neurosci.
Sleep enhances false memories depending on general memory performance
Behav. Brain Res.
The role of sleep in false memory formation
Neurobiol. Learn. Mem.
Overlapping memory replay during sleep builds cognitive schemata
Trends Cogn. Sci.
The science of false memory
Memories of things unseen
Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci.
The seven sins of memory: How the mind forgets and remembers
Eyewitness memory
Eyewitness testimony
Annu. Rev. Psychol.
A new solution to the recovered memories debate
Perspect. Psychol. Sci.
How to tell if a particular memory is true or false
Perspect. Psychol. Sci.
Human memory: An adaptive perspective
Psychol. Rev.
Individual differences in false memory from misinformation: cognitive factors
Memory
The confabulating mind
False memory for trauma-related Deese–Roediger–McDermott lists in adolescents and adults with histories of child sexual abuse
Dev. Psychopathol.
False recognition in women reporting recovered memories of sexual abuse
Psychol. Sci.
Remembering
Extending the range of adaptive misbelief: Memory ‘distortions’ as functional features
Behav. Brain Sci.
Associative illusions of memory
A bridge over troubled water: reconsolidation as a link between cognitive and neuroscientific memory research traditions
Annu. Rev. Psychol.
False memories: What the hell are they for?
Appl. Cognitive Psych.
The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory: Remembering the past and imagining the future
Philos. Trans. Roy. Soc. B.
Adaptive misbeliefs and false memories
Behav. Brain Sci.
Imagination inflation: Imagining a childhood event inflates confidence that it occurred
Psychon. Bull. Rev.
Imagination inflation for action events: Repeated imaginings lead to illusory recollections
Mem. Cognit.
Make-believe memories
Am. Psychol.
Imagination can create false autobiographical memories
Psychol. Sci.
Digitally manipulating memory: effects of doctored videos and imagination in distorting beliefs and memories
Mem. Cognit.
Imagination and memory: does imagining implausible events lead to false memories?
Psychon. Bull. Rev.
Do you remember proposing marriage to the Pepsi machine? False recollections from a campus walk
Psychon. Bull. Rev.
Imagination equally influences false memories of high and low plausibility events
Appl. Cognit. Psych.
Imagining implausible events does not lead to false autobiographical memories: commentary on Sharman and Scoboria (2009)
Appl. Cognit. Psych.
Event plausibility and imagination inflation: a reply to Pezdek and Blandon-Gitlin
Appl Cognit. Psych.
Source monitoring 15 years later: what have we learned from fMRI about the neural mechanisms of source memory?
Psychol. Bull.
Neural evidence that vivid imagining can lead to false remembering
Psychol. Sci.
Neural processes underlying memory attribution on a reality-monitoring task
Cereb. Cortex
Cited by (316)
Why death and aging ? All memories are imperfect
2024, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular BiologyThe function of REM and NREM sleep on memory distortion and consolidation
2023, Neurobiology of Learning and MemoryRemembering the Iron Curtain: Diverse Memory Events after 1989
2023, Nationalities PapersHarmonic memory signals in the human cerebral cortex induced by semantic relatedness of words
2024, npj Science of Learning
- *
These authors contributed equally to the ideas and writing of this manuscript.