Lakein, D A, Fantie, B D, Grafman, J et al. · Journal of clinical psychology · 1997 · DOI
Many people with ME/CFS say they have memory problems, but doctors have had trouble proving this in tests. This study looked at whether the issue might be that ME/CFS patients are bad at judging how confident they should be about their memories. When researchers tested both ME/CFS patients and healthy people on a trivia quiz, they found that both groups were equally good at knowing when they probably got an answer right—even though the ME/CFS patients reported much worse fatigue and cognitive symptoms.
Cognitive complaints are a hallmark of ME/CFS, but this study provides evidence that the problem is not simply that patients misjudge their own memory abilities. This helps clarify the nature of cognitive impairment in ME/CFS and suggests researchers should look elsewhere for explanations—such as actual retrieval deficits, processing speed, or attention problems rather than metacognitive dysfunction.
This study does not prove that ME/CFS patients do not have real memory problems—only that the mechanism is not a breakdown in metamemory judgment. It also does not rule out other cognitive deficits in domains like attention, processing speed, or executive function. The single trivia-based task may not capture all types of memory complaints patients experience in daily life.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Lakein, D A, Fantie, B D, Grafman, J, Ross, S, O'Fallon, A, Dale, J, et al. (1997). Patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and accurate feeling-of-knowing judgments.. Journal of clinical psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/(sici)1097-4679(199711)53:7<635::aid-jclp1>3.0.co;2-h
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-lakein-1997-patients-chronic,
author = {Lakein, D A and Fantie, B D and Grafman, J and Ross, S and O'Fallon, A and Dale, J and Straus, S E},
title = {Patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and accurate feeling-of-knowing judgments.},
journal = {Journal of clinical psychology},
year = {1997},
doi = {10.1002/(sici)1097-4679(199711)53:7<635::aid-jclp1>3.0.co;2-h},
note = {PubMed: 9356893},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/lakein-1997-patients-chronic},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/lakein-1997-patients-chronic
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