Abstract
Rationale
When asked “How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the ark?”, people fail to notice the distortion introduced by the impostor “Moses” and respond “two”. It has been argued that the effect must be due to the existence of a partial-match process. In most situations, the form of a question is not likely to closely match the memory representation it queries. Thus, for the partial match hypothesis people ignore some semantic distortions. In the same vein, it has been shown that the benzodiazepine lorazepam drug induces some impairments of semantic memory as participants under lorazepam provide more incorrect recalls than placebo do with general information questions.
Objectives
The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the benzodiazepine lorazepam on the Moses illusion paradigm.
Method
The effects of lorazepam (0.038 mg/kg) and of a placebo were investigated in 28 healthy volunteers. Twenty-two illusory questions were presented along with 72 normal general information questions.
Results
Lorazepam impaired the ability to detect the Moses illusion. Moreover, lorazepam participants appeared less biased to consider a question distorted than placebo participants.
Conclusions
The temporary and reversible semantic memory impairments experienced by participants when falling into the Moses illusion are more frequent under lorazepam. The amnesic drug lorazepam may impair semantic processing as well as the strategic control of memory.
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Notes
\( {\text{{A}'}} = 22/{\left( {72 + 22} \right)} + {\left( {{\left( {{\text{H}} - {\text{FA}}} \right)}{\left( {1 + {\text{H}} - {\text{FA}}} \right)}} \right)}/{\left( {4{\text{H}}{\left( {1 - {\text{FA}}} \right)}} \right)} \)
In this formula, 22 corresponded to the number of experimental Moses questions and 72 to the number of fillers.
\( {B}''d = {\left( {{\left( {1 - {\text{H}}} \right)}{\left( {1 - {\text{FA}}} \right)} - {\text{HFA}}} \right)}/{\left( {{\left( {1 - {\text{H}}} \right)}{\left( {1 - {\text{FA}}} \right)} + {\text{HFA}}} \right)}. \)
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by a Cognitique grant (no. COG 53B) “Perturbations and recovery of cognitive functions” from the French Ministry of Research. Laurence Paire-Ficout benefited from a post-doctoral grant from Cognitique. The authors wish to thank Christine Ramana-Keller for technical assistance, Dr. Marie Welsch for the medical examination of the participants, Markus Brauer for his advice about statistical analyses, and Professor Guy Lories and Professor Jean-Marie Danion and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. We particularly thank Yvonne Turrell who patiently corrected our English. We also thank the INSERM and the CNRS institutions.
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Izaute, M., Paire-Ficout, L. & Bacon, E. Benzodiazepines and semantic memory: effects of lorazepam on the Moses illusion. Psychopharmacology 172, 309–315 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-003-1665-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-003-1665-x