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(Only) time can tell: Age differences in false memory are magnified at longer delays
- Source :
- Psychology and Aging
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- Center for Open Science, 2019.
-
Abstract
- Older adults often report memories of past events that are partly false. To date, age differences in memory errors have primarily been examined after a delay of minutes to hours. However, in real-life situations we rely on memories formed days to weeks in the past. We examined associative memory for unrelated scene-word pairs in younger and older adults after 24 hr and 8 days. Age differences in memory were magnified after 8 days due to a disproportionate increase in false alarms to rearranged pairs in older adults. In both age groups, the effects of delay were modulated by memory fidelity and whether or not participants had experienced similar events, which potentially caused interference. Older adults were particularly vulnerable to associative memory errors having experienced similar events, even when the initial memory was of high fidelity. We suggest that the fidelity of memory representations in concert with monitoring processes to resolve interference determine how the passage of time affects the propensity to falsely remember details of the past. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
- Subjects :
- Adult
Male
Aging
medicine.medical_specialty
Social Psychology
media_common.quotation_subject
PsyArXiv|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Developmental Psychology
Fidelity
False memory
Audiology
050105 experimental psychology
Young Adult
Age groups
Memory
medicine
Humans
bepress|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Psychology|Child Psychology
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Young adult
bepress|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Psychology|Developmental Psychology
Aged
media_common
Age differences
Memory errors
05 social sciences
Age Factors
nutritional and metabolic diseases
Middle Aged
Content-addressable memory
nervous system diseases
PsyArXiv|Social and Behavioral Sciences
Mental Recall
bepress|Social and Behavioral Sciences
Female
Geriatrics and Gerontology
Psychology
PsyArXiv|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Developmental Psychology|Aging
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Psychology and Aging
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....4fa481b622fb9c607063f99b75823bbc