Presentation modality effect on false memories in younger and older adults: The use of an inference paradigm (original) (raw)
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False Recognition Effects in Young and Older Adults' Memory for Text Passages
The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 1998
Recent work has demonstrated an age-related increase in susceptibility to illusory memories; specifically, older adults make more false recognition responses to unstudied items when such items are semantically related to studied items. The majority of studies have examined false recognition for semantically associated words; the current study extends that previous work by examining false recognition effects for schematized story actions. In two experiments young and older adults studied schematized stories and were later given a recognition test for studied and unstudied story actions. Our results indicate that both age groups produced robust false recognition effects, but older adults were not more susceptible to these effects. These results suggest there are limits to the range of circumstances that yield age differences in illusory memories.
Attention to item-specific processing eliminates age effects in false memories
Journal of Memory and Language, 2005
One possible reason for age differences in false memory susceptibility is that older adults may not encode contextual information that allows them to distinguish between presented and non-presented but internally activated items. The present research examines whether older adults can reduce false memories when given external contextual support. In the first two experiments, semantically related lists were presented in the context of sentences that either elicited or did not elicit meanings of items that converged on a non-presented theme word. Semantically related lists were presented as the second word of cue-target pairs in Experiment 3. Results demonstrated that when gist-based processing of list items was made less accessible, older and younger adults showed similar reductions in false recall and recognition. Finally, although both groups showed reductions, measures of response latencies indicated that non-presented critical theme words were internally activated. These results have implications for encoding deficit and strategy selection as they relate to accounts of age-related deficits in memory.
When True Memories Suppress False Memories: Effects of Ageing
Cognitive Neuropsychology, 1999
After studying a list of words that are all associated to a nonpresented target word, people often falsely recall or recognise the nonpresented target. Previous studies have shown that such false memories are greatly reduced when study lists are presented and tested several times compared to a single study/test trial. We report that older adults, who are sometimes more susceptible to memory distortions than are young adults, failed to exhibit any reduction in false recall or false recognition after five study/test trials compared to a single trial. By contrast, younger adults showed robust suppression of false memories after five study/test trials compared to a single trial. These results are consistent with the idea that older adults rely on memory for the general features or gist of studied materials, but tend not to encode or to retrieve specific details of individual items.
The effect of warnings on false memories in young and older adults
2002
In the present experiments , we examined adult age differences in the ability to suppress false memories, using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm . Participants studied lists of words (e.g., bed, rest, awake, etc.), each related to a nonpresented critical lure word (e.g., sleep). Typically, recognition tests reveal false alarms to critical lures at rates comparable to those for hits for studied words. In two experiments, separate groups of young and older adults were unwarned about the false memory effect, warned before studying the lists, or warned after study and before test. Lists were presented at either a slow rate (4 sec/word) or a faster rate (2 sec/word). Young adults were better able to discriminate between studied words and critical lures when warned about the DRM effect either before study or after study but before retrieval, and their performance improved with a slower presentation rate. Older adults were able to discriminate between studied words and critical lures when given warnings before study, but not when given warnings after study but before retrieval. Performance on a working memory capacity measure predicted false recognition following study and retrieval warnings. The results suggest that effective use of warnings to reduce false memories is contingent on the quality and type of encoded information, as well as on whether that information is accessed at retrieval. Furthermore, discriminating between similar sources of activation is dependent on working memory capacity, which declines with advancing age.
Psychology and Aging, 2004
Two experiments explored whether the higher vulnerability to false memories in the DRM paradigm in older compared to young adults reflects a deficit in source monitoring. In both experiments, adding together the number of falsely recalled critical lures and the number of critical lures produced on a post-recall test asking participants to report items that they had thought of but did not recall, indicated that the critical lures were activated during the experiment equally often in young and older adults. However, older adults were more likely than young adults to say that they had actually heard the lures. When strongly encouraged to examine the origin of memories (Experiment 2), the warning substantially reduced false recall in young but not older adults. These results are consistent with the idea that older adults have more difficulty later identifying the source of information that was activated as a consequence of intact semantic activation processes.
The ironic effect of guessing: increased false memory for mediated lists in younger and older adults
Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section B, Aging, neuropsychology and cognition, 2015
Younger and older adults studied lists of words directly (e.g., creek, water) or indirectly (e.g., beaver, faucet) related to a nonpresented critical lure (CL; e.g., river). Indirect (i.e., mediated) lists presented items that were only related to CLs through nonpresented mediators (i.e., directly related items). Following study, participants completed a condition-specific task, math, a recall test with or without a warning about the CL, or tried to guess the CL. On a final recognition test, warnings (vs. math and recall without warning) decreased false recognition for direct lists, and guessing increased mediated false recognition (an ironic effect of guessing) in both age groups. The observed age-invariance of the ironic effect of guessing suggests that processes involved in mediated false memory are preserved in aging and confirms the effect is largely due to activation in semantic networks during encoding and to the strengthening of these networks during the interpolated tasks.
Variations in processing resources and resistance to false memories in younger and older adults
Memory, 2006
The influence of available processing resources on the resistance to false memories (FMs) for lists of semantically related items associated with a non-presented critical lure was examined in younger and older adults. Reducing the available resources at encoding in younger adults (Experiment 1 and 2) led to a performance similar to the older adults' one (i.e., higher rates of FMs in addition to reduced rates of correct recall). However, increasing the available resources (Experiment 2 and 3) yielded to improvements in the rates of correct recall in both age groups and decreased the probability of FMs in younger adults although warnings had to be added in older adults to obtain similar effects on FMs. Parallel influences on a post-recall test asking participants to report items that they had thought of but did not recall were also found. The influence of available cognitive resources for memory accuracy is also discussed with respect to activation-monitoring (e.g., and fuzzy-trace (e.g., accounts of age-related increased in false memories.
PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2000
People falsely endorse semantic associates and morpheme rearrangements of studied words at high rates in recognition testing. The coexistence of these results is paradoxical: Models of reading that presume automatic extraction of meaning cannot account for elevated false memory for foils that are related to studied stimuli only by their visual form; models without such a process cannot account for false memory for semantic foils. Here we show how sentence and list study contexts encourage different encoding modes and consequently lead to different patterns of memory errors. Participants studied compound words, such as tailspin and floodgate, as single words or embedded in sentences. We show that sentence contexts led subjects to be better able to discriminate conjunction lures (e.g., tailgate) from old words than did list contexts. Conversely, list contexts led to superior discrimination of semantic lures (e.g., nosedive) from old words than did sentence contexts.
False memory in normal ageing: empirical data from the DRM paradigm and theoretical perspectives
Gériatrie et Psychologie Neuropsychiatrie du Viellissement, 2020
False memories refer to falsely remembering something that did not happen or that happened differently. The effects of age on episodic memory underlie both the decline in real memories and the increase in false memories. But, what is the richness and what is the feeling of reality of false memories in the elderly? This mini-review on false memory in young and older adults presents the results from the literature using one of the most used paradigms in the laboratory to study false memories-the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. This paradigm generally consists in the presentation of semantically associated items-lists (words or images) related to a non-presented critical lure (e.g., bed, rest, awake. . ., the critical lure is sleep). During free recall or recognition tests, the participants regularly produce false memories (intrusions or false recognitions of the critical lures), increasingly with aging. We specifically ask the question of the richness of the false memory trace in young and older adults in terms of contextual associations (What-Where-When-Details binding) and phenomenological characteristics (remembering, knowing, guessing). We propose to examine this issue using a naturalistic episodic memory task via navigation in a virtual environment enriched with series of associated elements (e.g., vegetables stand) linked to non-presented critical lures (e.g., carrots). Based on preliminary results, we propose an integrative model of memory trace which can explain the differences observed between young and old people on the richness of their false memories.
Remembering words not presented in sentences: How study context changes patterns of false memories
Memory & Cognition, 2009
People falsely endorse semantic associates and morpheme rearrangements of studied words at high rates in recognition testing. The coexistence of these results is paradoxical: Models of reading that presume automatic extraction of meaning cannot account for elevated false memory for foils that are related to studied stimuli only by their visual form; models without such a process cannot account for false memory for semantic foils. Here we show how sentence and list study contexts encourage different encoding modes and consequently lead to different patterns of memory errors. Participants studied compound words, such as tailspin and floodgate, as single words or embedded in sentences. We show that sentence contexts led subjects to be better able to discriminate conjunction lures (e.g., tailgate) from old words than did list contexts. Conversely, list contexts led to superior discrimination of semantic lures (e.g., nosedive) from old words than did sentence contexts.