A "hyper-recency" bias in memory characterizes both psychoticism and déjà vu experiences

Area of Science:

• Cognitive psychology
• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry

Background:

• Psychosis involves conflicts between reality and subjective experience.
• Similar, less intense conflicts occur in the general population, such as during déjà vu.
• The cognitive underpinnings of these reality-experience conflicts are not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate shared cognitive correlates of psychosis-like symptoms and déjà vu.
• To test the hypothesis that memory for event timing is impaired in these conditions.
• To explore the role of memory for temporal information in reality-experience conflicts.

Main Methods:

• Two preregistered experiments were conducted with 500 participants from the general population.
• Participants completed measures of psychoticism and déjà vu experiences.
• Memory judgments for stimulus recency and recognition were assessed.

Main Results:

• Higher levels of psychoticism were associated with judging stimuli as more recent than they were.
• A similar "illusion of recency" was observed for both correctly and falsely recognized stimuli.
• Participants with higher psychoticism showed reduced sensitivity to actual stimulus recency, indicating impaired temporal memory.

Conclusions:

• A "hyper-recency" bias in memory, where past events are perceived as more recent, may contribute to reality-experience conflicts.
• This bias is specifically associated with psychosis-like symptoms and déjà vu, not negative mood symptoms.
• Findings suggest impaired temporal memory processing as a potential mechanism underlying subjective experiences that conflict with reality.