MEMORY DISTORTIONS IN DETOXIFIED ALCOHOLICS

Both detoxified alcoholics and matched controls demonstrated false rec all and recognition in a task previously shown to elicit memory distor tions. The important results concerning memory distortions in detoxifi ed alcoholics come from three specific findings in the recall data. Co ntrols clearly recalled a greater proportion of targets than critical lures, while this difference was only marginally significant for alcoh olics. Alcoholics also produced the critical lures earlier in their re call than controls. Finally, alcoholics produced more extralist intrus ions than critical lures while the opposite was observed for the contr ols. These results suggest that the nature of the memory distortions d iffers for these two groups of subjects. The memory distortions exhibi ted by the alcoholics are consistent with a deficit in monitoring the source of information in memory.