Confabulation

To follow up on my post on misinformation, let me point out something else that I think is frequently a source of misinformation: confabulation. Strictly speaking, confabulation consists of making up a story to explain events that you don't completely understand. Typically, it is associated with amnesia. A typical example would be a person with amnesia who goes to the pharmacy to get a prescription filled. While he is waiting, he browses the magazine rack and an article advertized on the cover of Redbook catches his eye. While he is reading, he drifts off into a mild fugue state. When he snaps back to reality, he has forgotten why he is in the drugstore reading a woman's magazine. So he creates a story that he had come to the store to buy the magazine for his wife. He buys it and goes home, forgetting his prescription altogether. Even people with mild memory-affecting conditions can go through this pattern. One thing that people who live with amnesiacs who continue to forget things need to keep in mind is that this happens frequently, and they should check to make sure they make it to appointments, pick up prescriptions, etc.

An important thing to remember is that the person does not consciously invent an explanation. To them, they are searching their mind for memories. To them, the story they make up seems like a memory, and they honestly think they are remembering something that they actually imagined.

Even people with no diagnosed memory problems can confabulate. Sometimes we cannot explain something, so we come up with an explanation. Even though this is a product of our imagination, our minds see it as something we learned, not something that we came up with. We can sometimes pass this information off as fact. This is particularly true of teachers, who are asked many questions every day. Sometimes we give an answer as fact that is really just reasonable conjecture.