Long-term memory
Are older adults more fooled by false memories when they listen?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Older adults resisted false memories when words were shown on screen but fell for them far more often when the same kind of word lists were heard.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Within-subject manipulation of presentation modality (visual vs auditory DRM lists) crossed with an age-group comparison, with ERPs recorded during recognition
- N
- N=39 · 39 participants: 29 younger college students and 10 cognitively normal older adults.
- Population
- Mandarin-speaking young adults and cognitively screened older adults in China
- Outcome
- False alarms to critical lures, hit rates, reaction times, and frontal (300-500 ms) and parietal (600-800 ms) ERP amplitudes
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Key findings
Older adults' false-alarm rate to lures was similar to younger adults' with visual lists (about 0.14 vs 0.15) but rose to about 0.49 with auditory lists. In the auditory condition, lures produced a strong early negative brain wave suggesting semantic conflict, rather than the familiarity-like positivity seen with visual words. In the late window, younger adults' parietal responses distinguished false alarms from true memories and correct rejections, but older adults' responses did not; older adults also tended to take longer to reject lures than to accept them, though this reaction-time pattern was only marginal.
Methodology
Younger and older adults studied lists of related words (for example, words all linked to an unpresented theme word) and then decided whether a probe word had been in the list, while dry-electrode EEG was recorded. Lists were presented either visually or as spoken words through headphones, and probes were either studied words or never-presented but related 'critical lures'. The researchers compared false-alarm rates, reaction times, and brain responses in an early window and a late window after the probe.
Limitations
The older group had only 10 people, so age-group conclusions are fragile, and the authors themselves flag the modest sample. Several key ERP interactions were only marginally significant, and age was not randomly assigned, so older and younger groups differ in many ways besides age. Scalp EEG cannot locate the brain networks involved, and word-list recognition may not reflect false memories in natural conversation.
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