Confabulation in a dysexecutive patient: implication for models of retrieval

A confabulating patient MM is described who, despite clear evidence of a dysexecutive syndrome, showed normal prospective and retrospective memory in everyday life and preserved autobiographical memory. He also performed well on many, but not all laboratory-based measures of learning and memory that were given. His confabulation typically involved going well-beyond the information he could genuinely recall, and was attributed to a defect in memory monitoring resulting from his frontal lobe damage. Implications for the role of "stop rules" in memory retrieval are discussed.