COHESION FAILURE AS A SOURCE OF MEMORY ILLUSIONS

One source of ''false'' memories may be that often only memory fragmen ts are retained. This would then result in a person being unable to di stinguish a false conjunction, constructed of memory components, from what had been actually experienced. Experiment 1, employing two-syllab le words in a continuous recognition paradigm, found that patients wit h left hippocampal damage classified more new verbal conjunctions as ' 'old'' than did normal subjects or patients with only right hippocampa l damage. Experiment 2, employing simple face drawings in a study-test paradigm, found that patients with damage to either side of their hip pocampal formation made more conjunction errors with pictorial stimuli than did normal subjects. The results are seen as supporting the hypo thesis that binding is an important early step in the consolidation pr ocess and that the hippocampal system is a critical component of the n eural system involved in the appropriate binding of memory components. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.