Disorganized Recall,Suggested Amnesia,and Compliance

Abstract

Spanos, Radtke-Bodorik, and Stam (1980) proposed that the phenomenon of disorganized recall in suggested amnesia cannot be accounted for in terms of behavioural compliance with task demands, as subjects simulating partial amnesia fail to show disorganization in recall. However, Spanos, et al. used a procedure which required simulators to recall specific numbers of items, and this may have required subjects to organize material to reach their targets. In the present study a control condition was used in which subjects were asked to ‘pretend’ to be partially amnesic but with no specification of the number of items to be recalled. Under these conditions subjects showed the disorganization, and thus it cannot be concluded that the disorganization of recall in suggested amnesia is free from the influence of behavioural compliance.