Memory failure in epilepsy: retrospective reports and prospective recordings.

People with epilepsy frequently complain of memory difficulties and previous research provides some support for the existence of memory dysfunction. However, our clinical experience is that many who report serious memory difficulties perform quite adequately on psychometric tests. One explanation for this discrepancy is that these patients are exaggerating the difficulties they encounter in their daily lives. This study aimed to examine this hypothesis by comparing patients' retrospective reports of memory to prospective recordings of everyday memory failures. Results demonstrated that far from over-emphasizing their daily problems, people with epilepsy believed fewer memory failures occurred when rated retrospectively than was indicated by a prospective recording device. While there was good agreement between the methods of assessing memory failures for the frequency of their most troublesome difficulties, subjects tended to underestimate the incidence of the less pervasive everyday problems. The results are interpreted through the theory of memory introspection proposed by Herrmann.