Anthony J Bishara | PubMed Health

PubMed2005

Capture by misleading information and its false acceptance in patients with traumatic brain injury.

Exposure to misleading information, presented after a critical episode, can alter or impair memory reports about that episode. Here, we examine vulnerability to misleading information in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). The ability to initiate an effective retrieval strategy and inhibit irrelevant or interfering information requires participation from the prefrontal cortices, which are susceptible to damage following brain injury. We report that TBI patients are more prone to interference effects produced by misleading information during a cued-recall task and are more likely to accept this information as the product of 'remembering' compared with healthy controls. The results are consistent with a model proposing that patients are captured by highly accessible responses eliminating their opportunity to engage in recollection. Correlations between the cued-recall interference task and other executive measures helped elucidate the processes underlying 'capture'. In TBI patients, reduced recollection produced by a misleading prime was associated with impaired prospective remembering when engaged in a background task. A common functional deficit that may underlie poor performance on both tasks is the failure to inhibit previously relevant but currently irrelevant information. Subjective reports pertaining to the subject's cued-recall response were indexed by electrodermal activity. In control subjects, larger skin conductance responses (SCRs) were associated with a greater frequency of guess reports, suggesting that SCRs provide a marker for uncertainty regarding the candidacy of a selected response. TBI patients did not show this relationship, suggesting that impairments of post-retrieval evaluation might also underlie greater false acceptance of misinformation. Discussion focuses on the role of the prefrontal cortex and cognitive processes that mediate the selection and evaluation of memories.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Aging, subjective experience, and cognitive control: dramatic false remembering by older adults.

Recent research suggests that older adults are more susceptible to interference effects than are young adults; however, that research has failed to equate differences in original learning. In 4 experiments, the authors show that older adults are more susceptible to interference effects produced by a misleading prime. Even when original learning was equated, older adults were 10 times as likely to falsely remember misleading information and were much less likely to increase their accuracy by opting not to answer under conditions of free responding. The results are well described by a multinomial model that postulates multiple modes of cognitive control. According to that model, older adults are likely to be captured by misleading information, a form of goal neglect or deficit in inhibitory functions.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

The detection and tracing of melodic key changes.

Adjusting to key changes in music is vital to a listener's understanding of it, although it is unclear when this adjustment occurs. In three experiments, participants heard obscure melodies that sometimes contained key changes. Both the number of notes after the change and the change distance were manipulated. For one task, the participants were explicitly asked to detect a change. For another task, the participants rated probe tones. These ratings allowed us to trace the listeners' multiple representations of keys. Results suggest that old keys were abruptly abandoned but that new keys were accepted gradually. More distant key changes (e.g., C-F#) were associated with more accurate detection of change, as well as with more time being required to adapt to the new key.

Humans↗