Confabulation
A Confabulation is a Memory Error that ...
- See: Basal Forebrain, Conversation, Confabulation (Neural Networks), Hallucination (Artificial Intelligence), Memory Error, Aneurysm, Anterior Communicating Artery, Dementia.
References
2023
- (Wikipedia, 2023) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/confabulation Retrieved:2023-10-4.
- In psychology, confabulation is a memory error consisting of the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world. It is generally associated with certain types of brain damage (especially aneurysm in the anterior communicating artery) or a specific subset of dementias. [1] While still an area of ongoing research, the basal forebrain is implicated in the phenomenon of confabulation. People who confabulate present with incorrect memories ranging from subtle inaccuracies to surreal fabrications, and may include confusion or distortion in the temporal framing (timing, sequence or duration) of memories. In general, they are very confident about their recollections, even when challenged with contradictory evidence.
Confabulation occurs when individuals mistakenly recall false information, without intending to deceive. Brain damage, dementia, and anticholinergic toxidrome can cause this distortion. Two types of confabulation exist: provoked and spontaneous, with two distinctions: verbal and behavioral. Verbal statements, false information, and the patient's unawareness of the distortion are all associated with this phenomenon. Personality structure also plays a role in confabulation.
Numerous theories have been developed to explain confabulation. Neuropsychological ones suggest that cognitive dysfunction causes the distortion. Self-identity theories posit that people confabulate to preserve themselves. The temporality theory believes that confabulation occurs when an individual can't place events properly in time. The monitoring and strategic retrieval account theories argue that confabulation arises when individuals can't recall memories correctly or monitor them after retrieval. The executive control and fuzzy-trace theories also attempt to explain why confabulation happens.
Confabulation can occur with nervous system injuries or illnesses, including Korsakoff's syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, and traumatic brain injury. It is believed that the right frontal lobe of the brain is damaged, causing false memories. Children are especially susceptible to forced confabulation as they are highly impressionable. Feedback can increase confidence in false memories. In rare cases, confabulation occurs in ordinary individuals.
Different memory tests, including recognition tasks and free recall tasks, can be used to study confabulation. Treatment depends on the underlying cause of the distortion. Ongoing research aims to develop a standard test battery to discern between different types of confabulations, distinguish delusions from confabulations, understand the role of unconscious processes, and identify pathological and nonpathological confabulations.
- In psychology, confabulation is a memory error consisting of the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world. It is generally associated with certain types of brain damage (especially aneurysm in the anterior communicating artery) or a specific subset of dementias. [1] While still an area of ongoing research, the basal forebrain is implicated in the phenomenon of confabulation. People who confabulate present with incorrect memories ranging from subtle inaccuracies to surreal fabrications, and may include confusion or distortion in the temporal framing (timing, sequence or duration) of memories. In general, they are very confident about their recollections, even when challenged with contradictory evidence.
- ↑ Berrios G E (1998) Confabulations: A Conceptual History. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. 7: 225-241.
2023
- (Bottou & Schölkopf, 2023) ⇒ Léon Bottou, and Bernhard Schölkopf. (2023). “Borges and AI.” doi:10.48550/arXiv.2310.01425
- QUOTE: ... As new words are printed on the tape, the story takes new turns, borrowing facts from the training data (not always true) and filling the gaps with plausible inventions (not always false). What the language model specialists sometimes call hallucinations are just confabulations [9].
2023
- (Millidge, 2023) => Beren Millidge. (2023). "LLMs confabulate not hallucinate."
- QUOTE: People often describe the LLM as ‘hallucinating’ information whenever it makes up information which seems like it should fit for a given query even when it is trivially false. While evocative, this isn’t actually correct terminology. We already have a perfectly word for this precisely phenomenon in psychology: confabulation.
Confabulation is typically used in a psychiatric context when people have some kind of brain damage, especially to memory, which causes them not to be able to explain or answer questions correctly. For instance, if an amnesiac patient is asked questions about an event they were previously at, instead of admitting they do not know, they would invent a plausile story. Similarly, in split-brain patients, where the corpus callosum is severed so each half of the brain cannot talk to each other, patients can invent elaborate explanations for why the other half of their body is doing a specific thing, even when the experimenter knows this is not the case because they have prompted it with something differently. In general, people confabulating invent plausible sounding justifications which have no basis in fact. This is usually not conscious with an intent to deceive but instead appear to strongly believe in the story they have just reported. This behaviour is identical to what LLMs do. When they are forced to give an answer using a fact they do not know, they cannot say that they don’t know, since in training such examples would be followed by the actual fact. Instead, they make up something plausible. They confabulate.
More importantly, if we recognize that what LLMs are really doing is confabulating, we can try to compare and contrast their behaviour with that of humans. Humans confabulate in a wide variety of circumstances and especially with some neural pathologies such as with memory impairments and in split-brain patient. Funnily enough, these are similar to a LLM. What are LLMs but humans with extreme amnesia and no central coherence?
- QUOTE: People often describe the LLM as ‘hallucinating’ information whenever it makes up information which seems like it should fit for a given query even when it is trivially false. While evocative, this isn’t actually correct terminology. We already have a perfectly word for this precisely phenomenon in psychology: confabulation.