Patients with schizophrenia do not produce more false memories than controls but are more confident in them

Abstract

Although patients did not produce more false memories than controls, such errors were made with higher confidence relative to controls. The decreased confidence gap in patients is thought to stem from a gist-based recollection strategy, whereby little evidence suffices to make a strong judgment.

The production of spontaneous false memories across childhood

“…They found that younger children made more script-related errors than older children. So, like the findings from the research using visual scenes (Moritz et al, 2006), it is likely that "real" scenes also rely on certain schemas and scripts that may influence true and false memory production.…”

“…A false memory paradigm containing visual scenes was used in the present study. The effectiveness of this false memory paradigm has been substantiated in previous research (Moritz et al, 2006;Peters et al, 2012). We used three black-and-white visual scenes of a classroom, funeral, and beach (see Moritz et al, 2006).…”

“…The effectiveness of this false memory paradigm has been substantiated in previous research (Moritz et al, 2006;Peters et al, 2012). We used three black-and-white visual scenes of a classroom, funeral, and beach (see Moritz et al, 2006). Scenes were selected on several criteria: they should be broadly familiar from personal experience or other sources (e.g., books, movies), they should be easy to identify, and incorporate a high level of details.…”

“…Recently, Moritz, Woodward, and Rodriguez-Raecke (2006) constructed a false memory paradigm containing visual scenes for examining memory deficits in schizophrenic patients. They developed drawings of scenes (e.g., a beach) in which certain related elements were left out (e.g., a beach ball).…”

Episodic Memory in Schizophrenia

“…There have been a handful of studies that actually found patients to be less susceptible to false memories than controls (as reviewed in Moritz et al 2006). One theory to explain this pointed to different underlying cognitive mechanisms in patients than controls; namely, during encoding, controls may be engaging in a sustained spreading of semantic activation (Moritz et al 2004).…”