How rich are false memories in a naturalistic context in healthy aging?

The recall of factual and contextual information is a core characteristic of episodic memory sensitive to aging effects. The innovative aim of the present study was to assess in a naturalistic context the quantity and quality of correct and false free recalls among younger and older adults considering feature binding (What-Where-When-Details) and recollection (Remembering vs. Knowing). Thanks to virtual reality, we designed a multimodal environment simulating a lively town in which we implemented a variant of a DRM task rich in sets of semantically related items (e.g., fruits on a market stall). We asked 30 young and 30 older participants to navigate in the virtual environment, paying attention to the items, and then recall as many items and as much contextual information as possible and indicate the presence of recollection. As expected, older adults produced fewer correct recall but more intrusions than younger adults, and their correct recall was more deficient in binding and recollection. In both age groups, false recall was associated with the correct context inferred from a related set of items. However, the intrusions produced by older adults were highly recollected compared to those of the younger adults, and they were associated with false item-related contextual information.