TY - JOUR
T1 - Delusion and confabulation
T2 - Mistakes of perceiving, remembering and believing
AU - Langdon, Robyn
AU - Bayne, Tim
PY - 2010/1
Y1 - 2010/1
N2 - This paper adopts an inclusive approach to the relationship between delusion and confabulation, according to which some symptoms might qualify as both delusional and confabulatory. Our initial focus is on the cardinal signs of delusions: incomprehensibility, incorrigibility, and subjective conviction. Setting aside post hoc (or secondary) confabulations-plausible rationalisations that might be generated by nonpathological belief formation processes-we focus on spontaneous memory-based confabulations which, we suggest, conform to the characterisation of delusions. After considering current accounts of the role of experience in delusion formation, we propose that spontaneous confabulations are located at (or towards) the received end of a received-reflective spectrum of delusions: the spontaneous confabulator simply receives and endorses as genuine the content of an apparent-yet implausible-memory experience. Underlying both spontaneous confabulations and other received delusions, we propose, is an inability to inhibit the prepotent tendency to upload and maintain experiential content (mnemonic or perceptual) into belief.
AB - This paper adopts an inclusive approach to the relationship between delusion and confabulation, according to which some symptoms might qualify as both delusional and confabulatory. Our initial focus is on the cardinal signs of delusions: incomprehensibility, incorrigibility, and subjective conviction. Setting aside post hoc (or secondary) confabulations-plausible rationalisations that might be generated by nonpathological belief formation processes-we focus on spontaneous memory-based confabulations which, we suggest, conform to the characterisation of delusions. After considering current accounts of the role of experience in delusion formation, we propose that spontaneous confabulations are located at (or towards) the received end of a received-reflective spectrum of delusions: the spontaneous confabulator simply receives and endorses as genuine the content of an apparent-yet implausible-memory experience. Underlying both spontaneous confabulations and other received delusions, we propose, is an inability to inhibit the prepotent tendency to upload and maintain experiential content (mnemonic or perceptual) into belief.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77649312806&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13546800903000229
DO - 10.1080/13546800903000229
M3 - Review article
C2 - 19760525
AN - SCOPUS:77649312806
VL - 15
SP - 319
EP - 345
JO - Cognitive Neuropsychiatry
JF - Cognitive Neuropsychiatry
SN - 1354-6805
IS - 1-3
ER -