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Query: UMLS:C0598853 (forgetting)
 3,232 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

One to 54 years after graduating, 276 alumni correctly recalled 3,025 of 3,967 college grades. Omission errors increased with the retention interval, and better students made fewer errors. Accuracy of recall increased with confidence in recall. Eighty-one percent of commission errors inflated the actual grade. Distortions occur soon after graduation, remain constant during the retention interval, and are greater for better students and for courses students enjoyed most. Confidence in recall is unrelated to distortion. Courses that were not freely recalled, but had to be cued, were recalled less accurately and with less distortion. The data support a supplementary theory of memory distortion. The theory assumes that forgetting and distorting memory content are relatively independent processes, that relevant generic memories are used to fill in gaps after episodic memory fails, that systematic distortions affect autobiographical content that is emotionally and motivationally valenced, and that most individuals supplement with content that is emotionally more gratifying than the veridical content. The data conflict with dynamic displacement theories according to which screen memories actively block access to unpleasant veridical content.
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PMID:Fifty years of memory of college grades: accuracy and distortions. 1826 12

Besides forgetting, memory is also prone to distortions, errors and illusions. Confabulation is one type of memory distortion that may occur in cases of brain damage. Although confabulations are described anecdotally in patients with alcoholic Korsakoff syndrome (KS), there are few systematic investigations of the presence and nature of these types of false memories in KS. Moreover, it is unclear whether KS patients' confabulations evenly affect all types of memories, or whether certain memory domains are more susceptible. Our study attempted to clarify two questions: first, whether confabulations are a critical feature of the cognitive impairment associated with long-term KS in a large sample of patients (N=42). Second, we investigated which memory domain is most likely affected by confabulations in KS. To elicit confabulations, we used a Confabulation Interview containing questions from different memory domains. We found that KS patients overall confabulated more compared to a group of healthy subjects. Furthermore, we found that patients confabulated most within the episodic/autobiographical memory domain. Our results imply that besides pronounced memory deficits typically associated with KS, confabulation can also be regarded as a clinical feature of the disease. The preponderance of episodic confabulation obtained here by using a standardized test, confirms anecdotic reports that KS patients confabulate in everyday life mainly with respect to their personal past and present. Thus, for a detailed description of the memory profile of KS patients, the screening of confabulation tendencies may be a useful supplementary clinical tool.
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PMID:Confabulations in alcoholic Korsakoff patients. 1867 86

Incorrect beliefs about the properties of memory have broad implications: the media conflate normal forgetting and inadvertent memory distortion with intentional deceit, juries issue verdicts based on flawed intuitions about the accuracy and confidence of testimony, and students misunderstand the role of memory in learning. We conducted a large representative telephone survey of the U.S. population to assess common beliefs about the properties of memory. Substantial numbers of respondents agreed with propositions that conflict with expert consensus: Amnesia results in the inability to remember one's own identity (83% of respondents agreed), unexpected objects generally grab attention (78%), memory works like a video camera (63%), memory can be enhanced through hypnosis (55%), memory is permanent (48%), and the testimony of a single confident eyewitness should be enough to convict a criminal defendant (37%). This discrepancy between popular belief and scientific consensus has implications from the classroom to the courtroom.
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PMID:What people believe about how memory works: a representative survey of the U.S. population. 2182 4