Did that happen, or am I just making it up? Investigating false memories after alcohol-induced blackouts in sober young adults

Abstract

Episodes of extreme alcohol binge-drinking can result in memory loss, transient anterograde amnesic experiences known as memory blackouts (MBO). The current study investigates whether falsely remembering details or events is more likely for those who frequently experience blackouts (at least 9 in the preceding 12-months) compared to controls who had never experienced an MBO. Participants completed a DRM (Deese, Roediger, & McDermott paradigm; Roediger & McDermott (1995)) recognition memory task, with a follow-up remember/know/guess judgement, before-alcohol and after-alcohol, while the MBO group additionally completed the task within 20-hours of a blackout, but when sober again. Both groups displayed reduced ability to discriminate between old and new words, and a more conservative response strategy, after-alcohol, which remained for MBO participants after-MBO. Lure words elicited more false alarms than unrelated words, yet the overall frequency of false alarms dropped after-alcohol. Interestingly, the MBO group recorded more ‘know’ than ‘remember’ responses compared to controls, suggesting a greater reliance on the process of familiarity than recollection. In contrast to our hypothesis, uncertainty in memory led to more caution in this experimental context. Future work should focus on whether naturalistic studies of alcohol-induced memory blackouts could identify increased false memory acceptance rates.