False recognition after frontal lobe damage: The role of encoding factors

Parkin, Alan J, Ward, Jamie, Bindschaedler, Claire, Squires, Ella J and Powell, Georgia (1999) False recognition after frontal lobe damage: The role of encoding factors. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 16 (3-5). pp. 243-265. ISSN 0264-3294

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Abstract

This paper reports a series of experiments on patient JB, a man with memory difficulties following damage to the left frontal lobe. The primary characteristic of JB's recognition memory impairment is a high level of false recognition together with a normal hit rate. The hypothesis that JB's false recognition reflects an over-reliance on familiarity is considered, but discounted on the basis that the false alarm rate is not affected by increasing the similarity between distracters and targets, and remains high when nonword stimuli are used. It is suggested, instead, that JB relies on a poorly focused memory description, which lacks item-specific detail but contains more general, low-level properties of the target items-these properties being held by many distracter items as well. This deficit is considered to arise because of damage to frontally mediated control processes involved in the selection of elements for memory encoding. An encoding deficit is supported by the fact that JB's false recognition is significantly reduced by orienting instructions, and is eliminated when his remote memory is subjected to recognition testing. In contrast, it is shown that manipulations at the level of retrieval (e.g. restricting the number of "old" responses) have little effect on his false recognition.

Item Type: Article
Schools and Departments: School of Psychology > Psychology
Depositing User: Jamie Ward
Date Deposited: 06 Feb 2012 15:37
Last Modified: 12 Jun 2012 12:39
URI: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/13537
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