Effects of the Benzodiazepine Lorazepam on Monitoring and Control Processes in Semantic Memory

Stem‐completion tasks (indirect, direct inclusion and exclusion) are differently affected by equipotent doses of lorazepam and flunitrazepam

“…The absence of impairment by L in the exclusion task also makes it impossible to ascribe L-induced changes in stem-completion to visual alterations, which seem to be specific to this compound (see Pompéia et al, 2003), because the three stem-completion tasks were equivalent in terms of visual characteristics. The same applies to the purported effects of BZs on lexical access (Massin-Krauss et al, 2002). Also, as both F and L have the same affinity to BZ receptors (Möhler and Okada, 1977;Möhler et al, 1978;Arendt et al, 1987;Müller, 1987), L's high potency does not explain why it impairs indirect and inclusion stemcompletion and not the exclusion version of this task.…”

“…generate, or generate/recognize; Jacoby, 1998); accessibility bias (Jacoby et al, 2001), etc. Unfortunately, such effects have seldom been investigated in the BZ literature (for exceptions in studies using L, see Bacon et al, 1998;Massin-Krauss et al, 2002). Future studies in this area contrasting L-induced effect to those of other BZs in equipotent doses may help to determine the underlying mechanisms that make L unique in terms of cognitive effects.…”

Benzodiazepines and semantic memory: effects of lorazepam on the Moses illusion

“…We observed that participants under lorazepam remained able to correctly set the response criteria, but they provided significantly more answers that should have been withheld according to their response criterion than placebo participants (Massin-Krauss et al 2002). In other words, lorazepam-treated participants were accurate in their judgments, but were not able to strictly adhere to these judgments when deciding whether to volunteer or withhold the answers.…”

“…In the same vein, Massin-Krauss et al (2002) found that memory accuracy scores were lower in the lorazepam than in the placebo group, even if the participants had been pseudorandomly assigned to the lorazepam and to the placebo group, taking into account their level of general knowledge as evaluated by the Information and Vocabulary subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R; Wechsler 1981). This finding confirmed that lorazepam impairs semantic memory performance.…”

“…We calculated that in the Massin-Krauss et al (2002) experiment only about 30% of the additional incorrect recalls produced by lorazepamtreated participants was attributable to false alarms. Furthermore, in the forced-report condition, evidence of lower memory scores in the lorazepam group raised the question of whether the retrieval process per se was also impaired by the drug.…”