lapsessuch

Lapsessuch is a term used in cognitive psychology to describe a temporary lapse-induced distortion of temporal memory, where the order of events is misremembered or mis-timed during recall or perception. The phenomenon affects the sequencing of items rather than their content. In typical experiments, participants are shown or heard a rapid sequence and later asked to reproduce or judge their relative order. Lapsessuch errors are identified when reported sequences deviate from the actual order beyond what random guessing would produce.

The word is a neologism combining lapsus, Latin for lapse, with a suffix intended to mark a subclass of errors. It is not part of standard memory taxonomy and remains mainly in exploratory discussions rather than formal theory.

Proposed mechanisms include brief attentional lapses, interference from adjacent items, and reconstructive processes during retrieval. Some accounts invoke context drift, where the mental timeline shifts subtly during encoding or recall, yielding a misplaced sense of timing.

Research methods include temporal order judgment tasks, sequence reproduction with timestamps, and delayed recall with confidence ratings. Lapsessuch findings have implications for eyewitness memory and user-interface design where accurate sequencing is critical. Critics note inconsistent replication and argue that lapsessuch may describe a family of related distortions rather than a single, unitary mechanism.

See also: false memory, temporal order error, order effects, eyewitness memory, memory reconstruction.