A patient's memory has been affected in some way. Before revealing the answer, decide what distinguishes distortion of recall from distortion of recognition.

Ask what specifically has gone wrong: is the actual content of a memory false, or is the content accurate but the feeling attached to it disturbed? Distortion of recall involves falsified content — the details of what supposedly happened have been altered, invented, or borrowed and misattributed, while the felt sense that it is a genuine memory remains intact. Distortion of recognition works the other way around: the content of a memory or current experience may be entirely accurate, but the felt sense of familiarity (or unfamiliarity) that would normally accompany it is disturbed, such as a first-time experience feeling inexplicably familiar, or a familiar one feeling inexplicably strange. Content versus feeling is the key axis separating the two.