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[False memories and aging: age effects on predictive inferences].

Doriane Gras¹, Hubert Tardieu, Serge Nicolas

¹Laboratoire de psychologie et neurosciences cognitives, CNRS UMR 8191, Groupe de recherche Mémoire et apprentissage, Université Paris Descartes, Boulogne-Billancourt. doriane.gras@parisdescartes.fr

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Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Older adults and young adults exhibit similar rates of false memories when reading texts. This suggests ecological reading situations do not exacerbate age-related memory differences found in laboratory settings.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience of Aging
Human Memory

Background:

The Deese, Roediger, and McDermott (DRM) paradigm commonly reveals higher false memory rates in older adults compared to younger adults.
Previous research often utilizes laboratory-specific tasks, potentially limiting ecological validity.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate age-related differences in false memory formation using a more ecologically valid text-reading paradigm.
To determine if predictive inferences during reading elicit similar false memory effects across age groups.

Main Methods:

Participants read short texts designed to induce predictive inferences, with key target words omitted.
Memory was assessed using both a free recall task (cued by the first sentence) and a recognition task (including presented words, target words, and lures).

Main Results:

Both young and older adults falsely recalled and recognized non-presented target words, indicating false memory formation.
The rate of false memory creation was comparable between the young and older adult groups in this text-reading context.

Conclusions:

Ecological text reading, involving predictive inferences, does not appear to increase false memory susceptibility in older adults relative to younger adults.
Findings suggest that age-related differences in false memory may be context-dependent, with implications for understanding memory in real-world situations.