Individual and Cultural Reality Monitoring

In: The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Band 560, S. 179-193

Abstract

Explores the relationship between reality & perceptions, memories, knowledge, beliefs, & expectations. Studies of individual cognition show that distortions may occur as a by-product of normal reality-monitoring processes. Characterizing the conditions that increase & decrease such distortions has implications for understanding, for example, the nature of autobiographical memory, the potential suggestibility of child & adult eyewitnesses, & recent controversies about the recovery of repressed memories. Confabulations & delusions associated with brain damage, along with data from neuroimaging studies, indicate that the frontal regions of the brain are critical in normal reality monitoring. Here, it is argued that reality monitoring is fundamental not only to individual cognition but also to social/cultural cognition. Social/cultural reality monitoring depends on institutions, eg, the press & courts, that function as cultural frontal lobes. Where does normal social/cultural error in reality monitoring end & social/cultural pathology begin? 46 References. Adapted from the source document.