"Forget to whom you have told this proverb": directed forgetting of destination memory in Alzheimer's disease

Destination memory: Memory associated with social interactions

Within the field of memory research, studies on destination memory (e.g., the ability to remember to whom information was previously told) show how it is closely associated with social cognition. The present review thus summarizes the literature on destination memory and demonstrates how it involves social interaction. It offers a comprehensive picture of the many factors that may influence destination memory and distinguishes factors related to the recipient (e.g., familiarity, emotional states, and distinctiveness/attractiveness) and sender of information (e.g., the sender's extroversion) in social communications. It suggests that destination memory involves the ability of the sender to infer the cognitive/affective state of the recipient and to attribute the output message to a recipient-related stereotype. Extrovert senders may also easily remember the destination as they typically value social communication, public sharing and processing of social information. Destination memory also involves features such as familiarity, age, emotional state, distinctiveness, and attractiveness of the recipient. By offering a comprehensive framework of how destination memory functions in everyday life interactions, the present review shows how destination memory is intimately associated with communicative efficacy and social interactions.

Repeated recall on source misattribution in Alzheimer's disease

We assessed the effect of repeated recall on item memory and source monitoring in Alzheimer's disease (AD). AD patients and controls were instructed to either look at or imagine items. They then had to either retrieve the items without indicating their source in three consecutive free recall tests, or to remember the source of the retrieved items in three consecutive source tests. Results showed a significant increase in item memory across all three free recall tests and all three source monitoring tests in control participants, but not in AD patients. More source misattributions were observed in AD patients and controls in the third source test than in the first and second tests. The absence of beneficial effect of repeated recall on item memory in AD patients may be attributed to compromise in memory consolidation processes, while the increase in source misattributions due to repetitions may be attributed to the inflation effect.

Memory of decisions: Relationship between decline of autobiographical memory and temporal discounting in Alzheimer's disease

Temporal discounting refers to the tendency to attribute higher value to a reward received early than to one received later. We evaluated this tendency in patients with Alzheimer's Disease. We also evaluated whether temporal discounting is associated with decline in autobiographical memory (i.e., the ability to remember past personal experiences), with executive dysfunction, and/or with general cognitive decline. We invited patients with AD and control participants to answer binary questions involving the choice between receiving a smaller amount of money earlier or a larger one later (e.g., "Which do you prefer, 10 euros in cash right now or 50 euros in a month?"). Results demonstrated higher temporal discounting in patients with AD than in control participants. Temporal discounting was significantly correlated with decline in AM and general cognitive decline but not with executive dysfunction in patients with AD. The tendency to decide based on immediate rewards (i.e., temporal discounting) in AD is related with difficulty in remembering information about experiences of previous decisions, and/or their consequences (i.e., decline in autobiographical memory).

False Memory in Alzheimer's Disease

Patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) not only are suffering from amnesia but also are prone to memory distortions, such as experiencing detailed and vivid recollections of episodic events that have never been encountered (i.e., false memories). To describe and explain these distortions, we offer a review to synthesize current knowledge on false memory in AD into a framework allowing for better understanding of the taxonomy and phenomenology of false memories and of the cognitive mechanisms that may underlie false memory formation in AD. According to this review, certain phenomenological characteristics of memories (e.g., high emotional load, high vividness, or high familiarity) result in misattributions in AD. More specifically, this review proposes that generalized decline in cognitive control and inhibition in AD may result in difficulties in suppressing irrelevant information during memory monitoring, especially when irrelevant (i.e., false) information is characterized by high emotion, vividness, or familiarity. This review also proposes that binding deficits in AD decrease the ability to retrieve relevant contextual details, leading to source monitoring errors and false memories. In short, this review depicts how phenomenological characteristics of memories and failures of monitoring during retrieval contribute to the occurrence of false memory in AD.

Cognitive Theory of Mind Influences Destination Memory: Evidence from Normal Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease

Objective

Theory of mind and destination memory are social abilities that require processing the attributes of interlocutors. Empirical research has demonstrated a relationship between performance on both abilities in normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We therefore investigated whether processing attributes of interlocutors would result in better destination memory in AD.

Methods

Twenty-six mild AD participants and 28 controls were tested on two occasions. On the first one, participants had to tell proverbs to celebrities’ faces. Following that, they decided whether they previously told that proverb to that celebrity or not. The same procedures were repeated on the second occasion; however, after telling the proverbs, participants had to introspect about what the celebrities might think about the proverbs (e.g., “what do you think that the celebrities would think about the proverbs?”).

Results

Group comparisons showed a beneficial effect of introspection on destination memory in controls (Z = −2.57, p < .05) but not in AD participants (Z = −1.05, p = .29). However, analyzes of individual profiles demonstrated that 15 AD participants demonstrated better destination memory after introspection.

Conclusions

Our findings show a beneficial effect of introspection on destination memory in normal aging, and at least in some mild AD cases. Future research should investigate the influence of social cognition on memory in AD and how introspection may provide a potential treatment for AD.

Self-defining Memories in Normal Aging

BACKGROUND

Self-defining memories refer to events that are vivid, effectively intense, and include enduring concerns about oneself.

OBJECTIVE

We investigated the relationship between the production of these memories in normal aging and the ability to integrate new information into existing knowledge in memory (i.e., updating).

METHOD

Older participants were asked to perform an updating task as well as to retrieve autobiographical memories that were later analyzed for their self-defining relevance.

RESULTS

Analyses showed significant positive correlations between updating and the production of self-defining memories.

CONCLUSION

Updating our life story is an important psychological process,which enables us to refine and enrich our life story with new experiences, roles and/or challenges, and this ability seems to be related to the capacity to produce memories that draw on the pursuit of long-term goals, meaning making, emotional regulation, and/or activation of self-images (i.e., self-defining memories). These findings suggest that updating one's identity throughout life, at least in normal aging, may be related to the shaping and retrieval of self-defining memories, memories that lead to the creation of narrative scripts, which themselves serve as the ingredients for "chapters" across the lifespan.

Context Memory in Alzheimer's Disease: The "Who, Where, and When"

Objective

Context memory, a component of episodic system, refers to the ability to retrieve conditions under which an event has occurred, such as who was present during that event and where and when it occurred. Context memory has been found to be compromised in older adults, an issue that we investigated in Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Methods

Thirty-one participants with AD and 35 older adults were asked to generate three autobiographical events. Afterward, they were asked to remember the names of all people who were evoked during the events, and the names for any location that was mentioned during the events. Participants were also asked to remember the year, season, month and day of the week when the events occurred.

Results

Compared to older adults, participants with AD showed lower memory for "who" (p < .001), "where" (p < .05), and "when" (p < .01). Compared to "who" and "where", both participants with AD and older adults showed pronounced difficulties in remembering the "when".

Conclusion

these findings highlight difficulties in remembering temporal information as an indication of context memory decline in AD. The difficulties in retrieving temporal information are discussed in terms of timing failures and hippocampal degenerations in AD.

Stereotypes Influence Destination Memory In Normal Aging

Background/Study Context: A substantial body of literature suggests that stereotypes can play a determining role in making judgments about the source of information. This study investigated this issue for destination memory or remembering to whom information has been previously told.

METHODS

Younger adults and older adults told six medical and six mechanical facts to a picture depicting a physician, and also told six different medical and six different mechanical facts to a picture depicting a mechanic. On a subsequent recognition task, participants had to decide to whom each fact had been previously told.

RESULTS

Analysis showed better destination memory for destination-consistent facts than for inconsistent facts, a stereotypical tendency that was more apparent in older adults than in younger adults. Difficulties in attributing facts to their fact-inconsistent destination were reliably correlated with executive functions in younger adults and older adults.

CONCLUSION

Executive functions are likely to be required to monitor discrepancies between facts and their inconsistent destination, whereas no such monitoring is required when statements are consistent with their destination.

Hallucinations in Alzheimer's disease: failure to suppress irrelevant memories

INTRODUCTION

Research with patients with schizophrenia suggests that inhibitory dysfunction leads to the emergence of redundant or irrelevant information from long-term memory into awareness, and that this process may be involved in generating hallucinations. We investigated whether inhibitory dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease (AD) leads to hallucinations.

METHOD

AD participants and healthy matched controls were assessed with a hallucinations scale and a directed forgetting task. On the directed forgetting task, they were asked to retain a list of 10 words (i.e., List 1). Thereafter, half of the participants were asked to forget this list whereas the other half were asked to retain the list in memory. After the List 1 presentation, all participants were asked to retain another list of 10 words and, successively, were asked to remember all of the words from both lists, regardless of the previous forget or remember instruction.

RESULTS

Relative to healthy matched controls, AD participants showed difficulties in suppressing the words from List 1. AD participants also showed more hallucinatory experiences than healthy matched controls. Interestingly, a significant correlation was observed between the score on the hallucinations measure and difficulties in suppressing List 1 in AD participants.

DISCUSSION

Hallucinations in AD may, at least in part, be related to difficulties in suppressing memory representations, such that unwanted or repetitive thoughts intrude into consciousness.

Negative Prospective Memory in Alzheimer's Disease: "Do Not Perform That Action"

Relatively to "standard" prospective memory, i.e., remembering to perform a future action, little is known about negative prospective memory, i.e., remembering not to perform a future action. This study investigated the latter ability in Alzheimer's disease (AD). AD participants and healthy older adults were asked to click on the keyboard or not to click on it when a cue word was encountered. Results showed more omissions (i.e., forgetting to click the keyboard when the instruction was to do so) in AD participants than in healthy older adults, suggesting a prospective memory deficit. Interestingly, more commissions (i.e., clicking the keyboard when the instruction was not to do so) were also observed in AD participants than in healthy older adults. Similar levels of commissions and omissions were observed in AD participants and in healthy older adults. Also, commissions and omissions were correlated with performance on an inhibition assessment task. Our findings reveal that AD is characterized by not only difficulty in the retrieval of recent information, but also difficulty to inhibit no-longer appropriate stimulus-response associations previously learned, suggesting a specific deficit of negative prospective memory in AD.

Autobiographical memory compromise in individuals with alcohol use disorders: Towards implications for psychotherapy research

It has been found that Autobiographical memory (i.e., memory for personal experiences and facts about the self) are not properly maintained in people with alcohol-use disorders (AUD). The present paper offers a comprehensive overview of findings regarding the consequences of AUD on autobiographical memory. More specifically, we offer a theoretical model (the AMAUD Autobiographical Memory and Alcohol Use Disorders model) according to which chronic alcohol consumption compromises emotion regulation as well as executive control, which maintains the construction of autobiographical memory. Compromises in emotional regulation and executive functioning can be linked to a weak aspiration to construct detailed memories (i.e., autobiographical overgenerality), compromises of subjective reliving, anterograde amnesia, negative self-defining memories, and a difficulty to mentally project oneself forward in time to generate complex autobiographical representations and self-images. By gathering cognitive and clinical aspects of autobiographical decline in AUD, this model constitutes a theoretical foundation that may lead to a better understanding of this decline. Different clinical perspectives are proposed for developing personalized autobiographical memory rehabilitation programs for individuals with AUD.

When Deception Influences Memory: The Implication of Theory of Mind

When deceiving, one should remember to whom a falsified story was previously told; otherwise he or she may include inconsistencies, and the deception will probably be discovered. Bearing this in mind, we investigated the potential relationship between deception and the ability to remember to whom a piece of information was previously told (i.e., destination memory). Forty-one adults were given a destination memory task in which they had to decide to whom proverbs had previously been told. They were also given a questionnaire about deception (e.g., “I sometimes tell lies if I have to) and a cognitive theory of mind task in which they had to predict the behaviour of protagonists who hold a mistaken belief about the state of the world. Results showed a positive correlation between deception and destination memory ( p < .001), a relationship that was further mediated by cognitive theory of mind ability ( p < .01). Deception requires monitoring and inferring what targets know, suspect, and believe. This monitoring ability (i.e., cognitive theory of mind) results in better processing of the target and consequently better destination memory. By showing the involvement of deception and theory of mind in destination memory, our findings emphasize the memory variations in social and interpersonal interactions.

Destination memory in schizophrenia: "Did I told Elvis Presley about the thief?"

Destination memory refers to the ability to remember to whom a piece of information was previously transmitted. Our paper assessed this ability in schizophrenia. Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia and 25 control participants told proverbs (e.g., "send a thief to catch a thief") to pictures of celebrities (e.g., Elvis Presley). Afterward, participants had to indicate to which celebrity they had previously said the proverbs. Participants also completed a binding task in which they were required to associate letters with their corresponding context (i.e., location). Analysis revealed worse destination memory and binding in patients with schizophrenia than in controls. In both populations, destination memory was significantly correlated with performances on the binding task. Our findings suggest difficulty in the ability to attribute information to its appropriate destination in schizophrenia. This difficulty may be related to compromise in binding separate cues together to form a coherent representation of an event in memory.

Memory suppression in Alzheimer's disease

An important challenge for memory is the competition between appropriate and inappropriate information during retrieval. This competition is normally reduced thanks to controlled inhibitory processes that suppress irrelevant memories. In Alzheimer's disease (AD), compromise of suppression ability may result in strong competition between relevant and irrelevant memories during retrieval. The present review highlights this issue by examining studies using the directed forgetting method in AD. This method in which participants are typically instructed to forget no longer relevant information is argued to reflect suppression in memory. Studies using the directed forgetting method suggest that AD participants experience difficulties when they are asked to suppress no longer relevant information in working, autobiographical, source and destination memory. Difficulties in suppressing irrelevant information, as may be observed in AD, may hamper memory retrieval by activating irrelevant memories at the expense of relevant ones.