Memory distortion: an adaptive perspective

Schacter, Daniel L.; Guerin, Scott A.; Jacques, Peggy L. St.

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2011.08.004

Cited by 416 publications

(348 citation statements)

References 96 publications

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“…Indeed, recent treatments of "false memory" have begun to attribute many distortions to the operation of adaptive processes, rather than to some flaw inherent in the system (for recent review see Schacter, Guerin, & St. Jacques, 2011). This is not to say that memory content is unconstrained.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The temporal orientation of memory: It's time for a change of direction.

Klein¹

2013

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

144

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a b s t r a c tCommon wisdom, philosophical analysis and psychological research share the view that memory is subjectively positioned toward the past: specifically, memory enables one to become re-acquainted with the objects and events of his or her past. In this paper I call this assumption into question. As I hope to show, memory has been designed by natural selection not to relive the past, but rather to anticipate and plan for future contingencies -a decidedly future-oriented mode of subjective temporality. This is not to say memory makes no reference to the past. But, I argue, past-oriented subjectivity is a by-product of a system designed by natural selection to help us face and respond to the "now and the next". I discuss the implications of the proposed temporal realignment for research agendas as well as the potential limitations of measures designed to explore memory by focusing on its retentive capabilities.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The temporal orientation of memory: It's time for a change of direction.

Klein¹

2013

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

144

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…That the human memory system is a fallible system is without question (e.g., see Howe, 2011a;Schacter, Guerin, & St. Jacques, 2011). Although a number of paradigms have established that memory is a powerful yet reconstructive system that is prone to error, it is perhaps the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm that has provided us with the quintessential evidence for this in terms of spontaneous false memory illusions (Deese, 1959;Roediger & McDermott, 1995).…”

Section: True and False Memoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, recent research has demonstrated that the production of false memories need not always have negative implications (see Howe, 2011a;Newman & Lindsay, 2009;Schacter et al, 2011). For example, research has demonstrated that false memories (i.e., DRM critical lures) are capable of priming performance on implicit memory tasks such as word-stem completions (McDermott, 1997;McKone & Murphy, 2000) or anagrams (Lövdén and Johansson, 2003).…”

Section: True and False Memoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Priming children’s and adults’ analogical problem solutions with true and false memories

Howe

Threadgold

Norbury

et al. 2013

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. lists where the critical lure (and problem solution) was presented as the initial word in the list (true memory priming), three of which were primed by DRM lists whose critical lures were the solution to the verbal proportional analogies (false memory priming), and three that were unprimed. We controlled for age differences in solution rates (knowledge base) in order to examine developmental differences in speed-ofprocessing. As anticipated, the results showed that adults completed the problems significantly faster than children. Furthermore, both children and adults solved problems primed with false memories significantly faster than either those primed with true memories or unprimed problems. For both age groups there was no significant difference between solution times for unprimed and true primed problems. Permanent repository linkThese findings demonstrate that (a) priming of problem solutions extends to verbal proportional analogies, (b) false memories are more effective at priming problem solutions than true memories, and (c) there are clear positive consequences to the production of false memories.

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“…Semantic representations are capable of capturing important structural features of the world at many different levels of abstraction, which allows for rapid and flexible responses to a diverse array of environmental challenges. This preexisting knowledge structure guides ongoing cognition, which usually aids performance, but under some circumstances can lead us into error (1)(2)(3). A striking example is the widely studied DRM (Deese, Roediger, and McDermott) false-memory illusion (4,5).…”

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confidence: 99%

Semantic representations in the temporal pole predict false memories

Chadwick

Anjum

Kumaran

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Recent advances in neuroscience have given us unprecedented insight into the neural mechanisms of false memory, showing that artificial memories can be inserted into the memory cells of the hippocampus in a way that is indistinguishable from true memories. However, this alone is not enough to explain how false memories can arise naturally in the course of our daily lives. Cognitive psychology has demonstrated that many instances of false memory, both in the laboratory and the real world, can be attributed to semantic interference. Whereas previous studies have found that a diverse set of regions show some involvement in semantic false memory, none have revealed the nature of the semantic representations underpinning the phenomenon. Here we use fMRI with representational similarity analysis to search for a neural code consistent with semantic false memory. We find clear evidence that false memories emerge from a similarity-based neural code in the temporal pole, a region that has been called the "semantic hub" of the brain. We further show that each individual has a partially unique semantic code within the temporal pole, and this unique code can predict idiosyncratic patterns of memory errors. Finally, we show that the same neural code can also predict variation in true-memory performance, consistent with an adaptive perspective on false memory. Taken together, our findings reveal the underlying structure of neural representations of semantic knowledge, and how this semantic structure can both enhance and distort our memories.false memory | semantic | temporal pole | fMRI | pattern similarity E ach of us has a vast store of semantic knowledge that we apply to incoming sensory data to extract meaning from the world around us. Semantic representations are capable of capturing important structural features of the world at many different levels of abstraction, which allows for rapid and flexible responses to a diverse array of environmental challenges. This preexisting knowledge structure guides ongoing cognition, which usually aids performance, but under some circumstances can lead us into error (1-3). A striking example is the widely studied DRM (Deese, Roediger, and McDermott) false-memory illusion (4, 5). In a typical DRM task, subjects are asked to memorize a set of words such as "snow," "winter," "ice," and "warm." After a delay, subjects will typically falsely remember having seen the semantically related word "cold." It is widely agreed that this memory illusion is driven by the semantic relatedness between words contained in the encoding list (e.g., "snow") and falsely remembered words that were not actually presented (e.g., "cold"). As such, it is thought that each list item automatically, but weakly, activates the semantically related concept (Fig. 1A). This activation leads to memory confusion, either through a cumulative priming of the related lure (5, 6) or the encoding of the semantic overlap as a "gist" memory (3), resulting in a false memory unless the error is detected by some internal monitoring p...

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Memory distortion: an adaptive perspective

Cited by 416 publications

References 96 publications

The temporal orientation of memory: It's time for a change of direction.

The temporal orientation of memory: It's time for a change of direction.

Priming children’s and adults’ analogical problem solutions with true and false memories

Semantic representations in the temporal pole predict false memories

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