Subjective and objective memory in a community-derived sample of people with epilepsy: Evidence from the Crimes and Four Doors tests

Richard J. Allen; Steven Kemp; Amy L Atkinson; Sarah Martin; Kata Pauly-Takacs; Courtney M. Goodridge; Ami Gilliland; Alan Baddeley

doi:10.1016/j.yebeh.2025.11051

Subjective and objective memory in a community-derived sample of people with epilepsy: Evidence from the Crimes and Four Doors tests

Richard J. Allen^*, Steven Kemp, Amy L Atkinson, Sarah Martin, Kata Pauly-Takacs, Courtney M. Goodridge, Ami Gilliland, Alan Baddeley

^*Corresponding author for this work

Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Subjective self-reports of difficulties with memory are relatively common in people with
epilepsy, though these do not always align with performance on objective memory tasks. The current study gathered qualitative and quantitative subjective reports of memory function in a group of people with epilepsy who were recruited via the charity Epilepsy Action, along with controls. Participants also carried out one of two recently developed experimental tasks (Crimes or Four Doors) that provide objective measures of long-term memory and forgetting, along with an additional verbal learning and recall task, each of which assess retention over a one-week period. Relative to controls, people with epilepsy reported memory problems across all the subjective measures, while also showing more objective forgetting on Crimes and Four Doors. When combining the epilepsy and control samples, subjective forgetting and memory satisfaction correlated with objective delayed recall and forgetting. Within the epilepsy sample, delayed recall correlated with subjectively experienced forgetting. These findings provide new evidence for subjective and objective memory difficulties in epilepsy and indicate the need for development of appropriate tools to detect atypical forgetting in this population.

Original language	English
Article number	110519
Number of pages	10
Journal	Epilepsy & behavior
Volume	172
Early online date	11 Jun 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yebeh.2025.11051
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 11 Jun 2025

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Subjective memory
objective memory
Long-term forgetting
epilepsy
Crimes test
Four Doors test

Access to Document

10.1016/j.yebeh.2025.11051Licence: CC BY

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Cite this

Allen, R. J., Kemp, S., Atkinson, A. L., Martin, S., Pauly-Takacs, K., Goodridge, C. M., Gilliland, A., & Baddeley, A. (2025). Subjective and objective memory in a community-derived sample of people with epilepsy: Evidence from the Crimes and Four Doors tests. Epilepsy & behavior, 172, Article 110519. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yebeh.2025.11051

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