Misattribution Errors Research Articles

Features and feedback: Enhancing metamnemonic knowledge at retrieval reduces source-monitoring errors.

Three experiments explored the issue of whether enhanced metamnemonic knowledge at retrieval can improve participants' ability to make difficult source discriminations in the context of the eyewitness suggestibility paradigm. The 1st experiment documented differences in phenomenal experience between veridical and false memories. Experiment 2 revealed that drawing participants' attention to these differences by pairing the ratings of the features with instructions about their utility was successful in reducing source misattributions of suggested items to the event. The results of Experiment 3 showed that participants can make online adjustments in the types of evidence used to make source judgments, as participants who received correct feedback during the training portion of the test reduced misattribution errors on the remainder of the test where feedback was not provided. Altogether, these studies suggest that people can discover and benefit from updated knowledge of the types of memorial evidence that discriminate between sources of information in memory.

Discriminating imagined from perceived information engages brain areas implicated in schizophrenia

Some of the symptoms of schizophrenia may reflect a difficulty discriminating between information that was perceived from the outside world and information that was imagined. This study used fMRI to examine the brain regions associated with this reality monitoring ability in healthy volunteers, who recollected whether information had previously been perceived or imagined, or whether information had been presented on the left or right of a monitor screen. Recent studies have suggested that schizophrenia may be associated particularly with dysfunction in medial anterior prefrontal cortex, thalamus, and cerebellum. In our data, activation in all three of these regions of interest was significantly greater during recollection of whether stimuli had been perceived or imagined versus recollection of stimulus position. In addition, reduced prefrontal activation was associated with the same misattribution error that has been observed in schizophrenia. These results indicate a possible link between the brain areas implicated in schizophrenia and the regions supporting the ability to discriminate between perceived and imagined information.

Misattribution of self-generated speech in relation to hallucinatory proneness and delusional ideation in healthy volunteers

When patients with hallucinations and delusions encounter their own distorted speech they tend to mistakenly attribute it to someone else. This external misattribution of self-generated material is thought to be associated with ‘positive’ psychotic symptoms. The aim of the present study was to examine this process in relation to the predisposition to hallucination-like experiences and unusual beliefs in a healthy population. Fifty-seven volunteers completed assessments of hallucination proneness and delusional ideation and performed a source-monitoring task. Participants listened to a series of pre-recorded words for which the source (self/non-self) and acoustic quality (undistorted/distorted) of the speech were varied across trials. Participants indicated whether the words were spoken in their own or another person's voice via a button press. Misattribution errors were greatest when participants made source judgements about their own distorted speech ( p < 0.01) and were positively correlated with delusional ideation scores, particularly the level of conviction with which delusional ideas were held ( p = 0.03), and there was a trend for a positive correlation with hallucination proneness scores. There was a negative correlation between unsure responses and delusional ideation when participants were processing their own distorted speech ( p = − 0.03). The misattribution of self-generated speech occurs in healthy individuals with high levels of psychotic-like experiences. This suggests that the same cognitive impairments may underlie psychotic phenomena in healthy individuals as in patients with psychotic disorders, consistent with a continuum model of psychosis.

Misattribution errors in Alzheimer's disease: The illusory truth effect.

Patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) and age-matched controls were compared on a series of tasks designed to measure errors of mis-attribution, the act of attributing a memory or idea to an incorrect source. Mis-attribution was indexed through the illusory truth effect, the tendency for participants to judge previously encountered information to be true. Cognitive theories have suggested that the illusory truth effect reflects the mis-attribution of experimentally produced familiarity (a nonspecific sense that an item has been previously encountered) to the veracity of previously encountered information. Consistent with earlier suggestions that AD impairs both familiarity and recollection (specific memory for contextual details of the study episode), AD patients demonstrated significantly fewer mis-attribution errors under conditions in which the illusory truth effect is thought to rely on relative familiarity (uncued condition), but more mis-attribution errors under conditions thought to rely on relative amounts of contextual recollection (cued condition). These results help further specify the precise nature of memory impairments in AD.

Source monitoring in eyewitness memory: Implicit associations, suggestions, and episodic traces

Both the distinctiveness heuristic and discrepancy detection hypotheses were investigated by independently manipulating both schema consistency and incidental suggestion in an eyewitness memory paradigm. A sequence of slides was shown, followed by a postevent questionnaire that contained both schema-typical and schema-atypical information. Fifteen minutes later, a source-monitoring task was administered. In Experiment 1, the proportion of source misattribution errors was greater for schema-typical items than for schema-atypical items, and the proportion of errors on suggested items was greater than that on control items. Suggestion affected schema-typical and schema-atypical items equally, providing no support for the predictions of either hypothesis. In Experiment 2, the interval between the questionnaire and the source test was manipulated. The results of Experiment 1 were replicated under the short delay, whereas the proportion of errors increased under the long delay. An associative network model involving two types of episodic traces was used to account for the results.

FMRI Evidence for the Role of Recollection in Suppressing Misattribution Errors: The Illusory Truth Effect

Misattribution refers to the act of attributing a memory or idea to an incorrect source, such as successfully remembering a bit of information but linking it to an inappropriate person or time [Jacoby, L. L., Kelley, C., Brown, J., & Jasechko, J. (1989). Becoming famous overnight: Limits on the ability to avoid unconscious influences of the past. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 326-338; Schacter, D. L. (1999). The seven sins of memory: Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, 54, 182-203; Schacter, D. L. (2001). The seven sins of memory: How the mind forgets and remembers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin]. Cognitive studies have suggested that misattribution errors may occur in the absence of recollection for the details of an initial encounter with a stimulus, but little is known about the neural basis of this memory phenomenon. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the hypothesized role of recollection in counteracting the illusory truth effect, a misattribution error whereby perceivers systematically overrate the truth of previously presented information. Imaging was conducted during the encoding and subsequent judgment of unfamiliar statements that were presented as true or false. Event-related fMRI analyses were conditionalized as a function of subsequent performance. Results demonstrated that encoding activation in regions previously associated with successful recollection--including the hippocampus and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC)--correlated with the successful avoidance of misattribution errors, providing initial neuroimaging support for earlier cognitive accounts of misattribution.

Emotional content and reality-monitoring ability: fMRI evidence for the influences of encoding processes

Memory for emotional items can be less prone to some types of memory distortion, such as reality-monitoring errors, than memory for neutral items. The present fMRI study examined whether this enhanced reality-monitoring accuracy reflects engagement of distinct processes recruited during encoding of emotional information. Participants only imagined named objects (word-only trials) or imagined named objects and then also viewed photos of them (word-picture trials). Half of the items were emotional (e.g., snake, casket). Later, participants heard object names and indicated whether the corresponding photo had been shown. Reality-monitoring errors occurred when participants attributed an item from a word-only trial to a word-picture trial. Such misattribution errors occurred less frequently for emotional than neutral items. Activity in emotion-processing regions (e.g., orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala) reduced the likelihood of later misattributions, likely due in part to interactions with regions that promote memory accuracy (e.g., the hippocampus). Distinct neural processes also increased the likelihood of reality-monitoring errors, depending on the emotional content of the items. Activity spanning the fusiform and parahippocampal gyri (likely reflecting mental imagery) increased the likelihood of reality-monitoring errors for neutral items, while activity in the anterior cingulate increased the likelihood of reality-monitoring errors for emotional items.

Deficits in Source Monitoring in Subjects with Auditory Hallucinations May be Due to Differences in Verbal Intelligence and Verbal Memory

Previous research has proposed that the experience of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia represents a failure to monitor self-generated verbal mental imagery. However, recent neuropsychological investigations into this matter have provided inconclusive and even contradictory findings with respect to the proposed relationship. This study compared the performance of three groups of adult males, schizophrenic inpatients (hallucinators and nonhallucinators), and normal controls, matched for age, education, and medication, on a source monitoring task. Initial analysis indicated that performance on a Verbal IQ and Verbal Memory test were significantly related to performance on the source monitoring task. Comparisons between groups were made on the basis of state and trait group characteristics with respect to hallucinations. After controlling for the influence of Verbal IQ and Verbal Memory on task performance, no between-group differences were found for overall accuracy in attribution of self-generated items or in the number of self to experimenter misattribution errors. This finding suggests that the inconsistent findings previously noted in this field may be due to a failure to identify and control for these important covariates. The implications of these findings for theoretical models of hallucination are discussed.

Repeatedly Thinking about a Non-event: Source Misattributions among Preschoolers

In this paper we review the factors alleged to be responsible for the creation of inaccurate reports among preschool-aged children, focusing on so-called "source misattribution errors." We present the first round of results from an ongoing program of research that suggests that source misattributions could be a powerful mechanism underlying children′s false beliefs about having experienced fictitious events. Preliminary findings from this program of research indicate that all children of all ages are equally susceptible to making source misattributions. Data from a follow-up wave of data indicate that very young children may be disproportionately vulnerable to these kinds of errors when the procedure is changed slightly to create mental images more easily. This vulnerability leads younger preschoolers, on occasion, to claim that they actually experienced events that they only thought about. These preliminary findings are discussed in the context of the ongoing debate over the veracity and durability of delayed reports of early memories, repressed memories, dissociative states, and the validity risks posed by therapeutic techniques that entail repeated visually guided imagery inductions.

Appropriating the actions of another: Implications for children's memory and learning

Perspectives on reality monitoring and sociocultural learning were integrated in four studies of children's memory of contributions to the outcomes of collaborative exchanges. Children made collages with an adult, and were later surprised with a reality-monitoring task in which they were asked to remember who placed particular pieces on the collage. In three of the four studies, 4-year-olds were more likely to claim they contributed pieces that the adult actually contributed rather than the reverse (Experiments 1–3). This bias was interpreted as evidence for appropriation , a process in which individuals adopt another person's actions as their own. The extent to which children committed misattribution errors depended on their involvement as decision makers (Experiments 1 and 3) and on the outcomes of the collages themselves (Experiment 2). Importantly, misattribution errors were not simply an expression of encoding failures or response biases (Experiment 4). Implications of these findings for children's memory and learning are discussed.