real events that transpired. research suggests that this inability to distinguish between past confabulatory and real events is centered on developmental differences in source monitoring. due to underdeveloped encoding and critical reasoning skills, children's ability to distinguish real memories from false memories may be impaired. it may also be that younger children lack the meta-memory processes required to remember confabulated versus non-confabulated events. children's meta-memory processes may also be influenced by expectancies or biases, in that they believe that highly plausible false scenarios are not confabulated. however, when knowingly being tested for accuracy, children are more likely to respond, "i don't know" at a rate comparable to adults for unanswerable questions than they are to confabulate. ultimately, misinformation effects can be minimized by tailoring individual interviews to the specific developmental stage, often based on age, of the participant. provoked versus spontaneous confabulations there is evidence to support different cognitive mechanisms for provoked and spontaneous confabulation. one study suggested that spontaneous confabulation may be a result of an amnesic patient's inability to distinguish the chronological order of events in their memory. in contrast, provoked confabulation may be a compensatory mechanism, in which the patient tries to make up for their memory deficiency by attempting to demonstrate competency in recollection. confidence in false memories confabulation of events or situations may lead to an eventual acceptance of the confabulated information as true. for instance, people who knowingly lie about a situation may eventually come to believe that their lies are truthful with time. in an interview setting, people are more likely to confabulate in situations in which they are presented false information by another person, as opposed to when they self-generate these falsehoods. further, people are more likely to accept false information as true when they are interviewed at a later time (after the event in question) than those who are interviewed immediately or soon after the event. affirmative feedback for confabulated responses is also shown to increase the confabulator's confidence in their response. for instance, in culprit identification, if a witness falsely identifies a member of a line-up, he will be more confident in his identification if the interviewer provides affirmative feedback. this effect of confirmatory feedback appears to last over time, as witnesses will even remember the confabulated information months later. among normal subjects on rare occasions, confabulation can also be seen in normal subjects. it is currently unclear how completely healthy individuals produce confabulations. it is possible that these individuals are in the process of developing some type of organic condition that is causing their confabulation symptoms. it is not uncommon, however, for the general population to display some very mild symptoms of provoked confabulations. subtle distortions and intrusions in memory are commonly produced by normal subjects when they remember something poorly. diagnosis and treatment spontaneous confabulations, due to their involuntary nature, cannot be manipulated in a laboratory setting. however, provoked confabulations can be researched in various theoretical contexts. the mechanisms found to underlie provoked confabulations can be applied to spontaneous confabulation mechanisms. the basic premise of researching confabulation comprises finding errors and distortions in memory tests of an individual. deese–roediger–mcdermott lists confabulations can be detected in the context of the deese–roediger–mcdermott paradigm by using the deese–roediger–mcdermott lists. participants listen to audio recordings of several lists of words centered around a theme, known as the critical word. the participants are later asked to recall the words on their list. if the participant recalls the critical word, which was never explicitly stated in the list, it is considered a confabulation. participants often have a false memory for the critical word. recognition tasks confabulations can also be researched by using continuous recognition tasks. these tasks are often used in conjunction with confidence ratings. generally, in a recognition task, participants are rapidly presented with pictures. some of these pictures are shown once; others are shown multiple times. participants press a key if they have seen the picture previously. following a period of time, participants repeat the task. more errors on the second task, versus the first, are indicative of confusion, representing false memories. free recall tasks confabulations can also be detected using a free recall task, such as a self-narrative task. participants are asked to recall stories (semantic or autobiographical) that are highly familiar to them. the stories recalled are encoded for errors that could be classified as distortions in memory. distortions could include falsifying true story elements or including details from a completely different story. errors such as these would be indicative of confabulations. treatment treatment for confabulation is somewhat dependent on the cause or source, if identifiable. for example, treatment of wernicke–korsakoff syndrome involves large doses of vitamin b in order to reverse the thiamine deficiency. if there is no known physiological cause, more general cognitive techniques may be used to treat confabulation. a case study published in 2000 showed that self-monitoring training (smt) reduced delusional confabulations. furthermore, improvements were maintained at a three-month follow-up and were found to generalize to everyday settings. although this treatment seems promising, more rigorous research is necessary to determine the efficacy of smt in the general confabulation population. research although significant gains have been made in the understanding of confabulation in recent years, there is still much to be learned. one group of researchers in particular has laid out several important questions for future study. they suggest more information is needed regarding the neural systems that support the different cognitive processes necessary for normal source monitoring. they also proposed the idea of developing a standard neuro-psychological test battery able to discriminate between the different types of confabulations. and there is a considerable amount of debate regarding the best approach to organizing and combining neuro-imaging, pharmacological, and cognitive/behavioral approaches to understand confabulation. in a recent review article, another group of researchers contemplate issues concerning the distinctions between delusions and confabulation. they question whether delusions and confabulation should be considered distinct or overlapping disorders and, if overlapping, to what degree? they also discuss the role of unconscious processes in confabulation. some researchers suggest that unconscious emotional and motivational processes are potentially just as important as cognitive and memory problems. finally, they raise the question of where to draw the line between the pathological and the nonpathological. delusion-like beliefs and confabulation-like fabrications are commonly seen in healthy individuals. what are the important differences between patients with similar etiology who do and do not confabulate? since the line between pathological and nonpathological is likely blurry, should we take a more dimensional approach to confabulation? research suggests that confabulation occurs along a continuum of implausibility, bizarreness, content, conviction, preoccupation, and distress, and impact on daily life.