126 research outputs found
Age-related increases in false recognition: The role of perceptual and conceptual similarity
No full textOlder adults are more likely to falsely recognize novel events than young adults, and recent behavioral and neuroimaging evidence points to a reduced ability to distinguish overlapping information due to decline in hippocampal pattern separation. However, other data suggest a critical role for semantic similarity. Koutstaal et al. [(2003). False recognition of abstract versus common objects in older and younger adults: Testing the semantic categorization account, J. Exp Psychol. Learn, 29(4), 499-510] reported that older adults were only vulnerable to false recognition of items with pre-existing semantic representations. We replicated Koutstaal et al.’s (2003) second experiment and examined the influence of independently rated perceptual and conceptual similarity between stimuli and lures. At study, young and older adults judged the pleasantness of pictures of abstract (unfamiliar) and concrete (familiar) items, followed by a surprise recognition test including studied items, similar lures, and novel unrelated items. Experiment 1 used dichotomous ‘old/new’ responses at test, while in Experiment 2 participants were also asked to judge lures as ‘similar’, to increase explicit demands on pattern separation. In both experiments, older adults showed a greater increase in false recognition for concrete than abstract items relative to the young, replicating Koutstaal et al.’s (2003) findings. However, unlike in the earlier study, there was also an age-related increase in false recognition of abstract lures when multiple similar images had been studied. In line with pattern separation accounts of false recognition, older adults were more likely to misclassify concrete lures with high and moderate, but not low degrees of rated similarity to studied items. Results are consistent with the view that older adults are particularly susceptible to semantic interference in recognition memory, and with the possibility that this reflects age-related decline in pattern separation
SUPERSEDED - Effects of perceptual similarity but not semantic association on false recognition in aging
No full text## This item has been replaced by the one which can be found at https://doi.org/10.7488/ds/2233 ## This study investigated semantic and perceptual influences on false recognition in older and young adults in a variant on the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. In two experiments, participants encoded intermixed sets of semantically associated words, and sets of unrelated words. Each set was presented in a shared distinctive font. Older adults were no more likely to falsely recognize semantically associated lure words compared to unrelated lures also presented in studied fonts. However, they showed an increase in false recognition of lures which were related to studied items only by a shared font. The data show that older adults do not always rely more on prior knowledge in episodic memory tasks. They converge with other findings suggesting that older adults may also be more prone to perceptually-driven errors.Expt1_data.csv - Experiment 1 data file
Expt1_data_key.csv - key to the Experiment 1 data file
Expt2_data.csv - Experiment 2 data file
Expt2_data_key.csv - key to the Experiment 2 data fil
Effects of perceptual similarity but not semantic association on false recognition in aging
No full textThis study investigated semantic and perceptual influences on false recognition in older and young adults in a variant on the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. In two experiments, participants encoded intermixed sets of semantically associated words, and sets of unrelated words. Each set was presented in a shared distinctive font. Older adults were no more likely to falsely recognize semantically associated lure words compared to unrelated lures also presented in studied fonts. However, they showed an increase in false recognition of lures which were related to studied items only by a shared font. The data show that older adults do not always rely more on prior knowledge in episodic memory tasks. They converge with other findings suggesting that older adults may also be more prone to perceptually-driven errors
Aging, working memory capacity and the proactive control of recollection: an event-related potential study
No full textThe present study investigated the role of working memory capacity (WMC) in the control of recollection in young and older adults. We used electroencephalographic event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the effects of age and of individual differences in WMC on the ability to prioritize recollection according to current goals. Targets in a recognition exclusion task were words encoded using two alternative decisions. The left parietal ERP old/new effect was used as an electrophysiological index of recollection, and the selectivity of recollection measured in terms of the difference in its magnitude according to whether recognized items were targets or non-targets. Young adults with higher WMC showed greater recollection selectivity than those with lower WMC, while older adults showed nonselective recollection which did not vary with WMC. The data suggest that aging impairs the ability to engage cognitive control effectively to prioritize what will be recollected.Please see README.tx
Mental reinstatement and selective recollection
No full textWhen trying to remember events, people are thought to be able to bias their memory search to selectively recollect the information they seek (Rugg and Wilding, 2000; Morcom, 2016). Long-standing cognitive theories propose that this memory selection involves mentally reinstating context that was present when the events were encoded, for example by visualising the location (Smith, 1979). In this fMRI study we will directly examine mental reinstatement using representational similarity analysis (RSA). We want to investigate the brain regions involved in mentally reinstating information about the scenes in which experimental events were encoded, and test whether this reinstatement is associated with successful memory performance and selection of targeted information. To do this we will use RSA measures of encoding-retrieval similarity, focusing on a priori scene-processing and object-processing ROIs, as well as domain-general ROIs. We will also conduct an exploratory searchlight of the whole-brain. We will use a similar RSA pipeline to a recent study from our lab (Naspi et al., 2021).
In the scanner, participants studied objects with scene backgrounds (context). At test, two scenes were designated as targeted events in each block. Participants viewed object names and were asked to judge objects as “targets” if these were studied with one of the two targeted scenes. We predict that participants mentally reinstated studied scenes before the retrieval cues are presented, and this reinstatement predicts recollection success on the upcoming trials. We also predict that recollection of targeted items will be prioritised over recollection of non-targeted items, so reinstatement of both scene and item information is greater for target trials at the time of recollection.
References:
Morcom AM (2016) Mind Over Memory: Cuing the Aging Brain. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 25.
Naspi, L., Hoffman, P., Devereux, B., & Morcom, A. M. (2021). Perceptual and semantic representations at encoding contribute to true and false recognition of objects. Journal of Neuroscience, 41(40), 8375-8389.
Rugg MD, Wilding EL (2000) Retrieval processing and episodic memory. Trends Cogn Sci 4:108; 115.
Smith SM (1979) Remembering in and out of context. J Exp Psychol Hum Learn Mem 5:460; 471
Associative Memory in Younger and Older Adults: The Roles of Novelty and Schema.
No full textPrevious studies suggest that age-related memory differences can be eliminated when older adults are able to use existing schematic knowledge to aid recall or recognition. This study investigates the role of schema, and additionally, the role of novelty in associated memory across older and younger adult age groups. The design of this study was based on the previous research of Castel (2005), and investigated performance of both age groups with regard to recall and recognition of grocery items and prices. Consistent with previous findings no age-related differences were present in the recall of market value prices, and younger participants outperformed older participants with regard to overpriced items. This suggests that previous existing schematic knowledge does aid memory recall, and promote the elimination of age-related differences. However, additionally, no age related differences were identified in the underpriced or novel conditions, possibly suggesting the role of additional memory effecting factors. Furthermore, no age-related differences were identified in the accuracy of older and younger adults’ recollection and familiarity responses across all price conditions. This suggests that both distinct aspects of recognition may be less sensitive to memory decline, and is inconsistent with previous literature that has suggested the ability to produce accurate recollection declines with normal ageing
Is there an Increase in False Memory Errors in Older Adults when a Lure is Meaningfully as opposed to Visually Related to the Studied Items?
No full textThis study examines the effect of age on false recognition error. Various lure conditions
(critical, related and font-only) were examined to determine which resulted in the greatest
rate of error. The test phase involved words with a strong semantic relation to study phase
words, weaker semantically related words and words which had no semantic link: purely a
visual similarity. A main interest of the study was to provide evidence for the Semantic
Categorisation Account, which proposes that older adults will show less of an increase in
false memory compared to a younger group, when the lure is not semantically linked.
Unusual looking fonts were used as visual stimuli. The Deese Roediger-McDermott Illusion
was used for the critical lure stimuli. Two age groups, young and old, were tested.
Unexpectedly, results failed to show a pattern that could relate to the Semantic Account.
Older adults were not found to have an increase in false memory errors in the critical lure
condition, however there was significant increase in the font-only condition. There was a
significant change in the difference between the age groups, compared to the font-only and
critical conditions. However, this change showed the font-only condition to cause an increase
in the difference, which does not match the hypothesis. Separate from age, there was a higher
proportion of false recognition errors for the critical lure group than the font-only group.
There was also an increase in the response time in the older group and they had a slightly
decreased correct recognition of ‘old’ words
Cognitive control of episodic memory retrieval and frontal function in young adults: memory for foils
No full textThe success of episodic memory retrieval is reliant on the degree of similarity between encoding conditions and cognitive operations at retrieval (‘encoding specificity’) and thereby the ability to flexibly adopt a retrieval orientation which biases retrieval cue processing in line with the specific goal of retrieval is associated with better memory performance. The present study adapted Jacoby et al.’s (2005) memory-for-foils paradigm to investigate whether agreement between retrieval orientation at encoding (picture-target vs. spoken word-target) and stimulus material at test (pictures vs. spoken words) produced superior memory for foils in young subjects. A series of neuropsychological tests assessing frontal function, long-term memory and intelligence were also administered to subjects. No difference in memory for foils between conditions was evident, a result attributed to a lack of retrieval selectivity demanded by the experimental tasks. Memory for foils performance was however correlated with level of frontal function in subjects. Poorer frontal function was associated with higher recognition errors and lower successful recognition of mismatched items in which demand for retrieval constraint is presumed to be greater. The use of the memory-for-foils paradigm for future research into source-constrained retrieval cue-processing is discussed
The Effect of Detail on Controlled Retrieval Processes in Recollection Memory
No full textThe aim of this study was to further explore the basic mechanisms of the episodic memory search process. This included looking at the content of what was encoded and retrieved and the processes behind this encoding and retrieval. Some theories in the literature suggest that the LTM is more gist-based as item-specific information is lost soon after encoding, however, other theories have demonstrated that gist-based false recognition occurs because people are not retrieving the item-specific information effectively. The transfer appropriate processing theory explains that to successfully recall required information, retrieval processes need to match those of encoding. Jacoby and colleagues describe a retrieval process that involves constraining the memory search in such a way to re-enter the encoding context in order to retrieve the sought-for information. Using their memory-for-foils paradigm, this study investigates source-constrained retrieval using pictorial stimuli. It was hypothesised that for accurate recollection in phase 3, the retrieval search process needed to match the processes that occurred during encoding and thus, as the recognition task in the third phase of this experiment is an item-specific task, more foils that were encoded in the item-specific context, rather than the gist-based context, will be recollected. The findings show a non-significant difference between the foils that were recollected, resulting in a null effect. A possible reason behind this is that the participants did not engage in gist-based processing in the conceptual condition effectively and so, all foils were being processed similarly regardless of the phase 2 condition. However, participants did illustrate that they could adjust their responses to the task requirements and there was evidence of some changing between gist-based and item-specific recollection. There was a significant difference in task-order effect which has also been found in a study by Koutstaal and Cavendish (2006) which should be explored in future research
The effects of age on the neural correlates of successful episodic retrieval: An ERP study
No full textThe neural correlates of successful episodic retrieval (recollection), as reflected in event-related potentials (ERPs), were investigated in young (ca. 20 years; n=18) and older (ca. 70 years; n=16) healthy individuals. Subjects classified a series of pictures according to whether each item was new or had been encountered at study in the context of an animacy or a size judgment task. By manipulating the number of times items were presented for study, subsets of test items were formed for which source accuracy did not differ according to age. Relative to ERPs elicited by unstudied pictures, ERPs elicited by items attracting equivalent levels of source accuracy showed marked age-related differences. Those from younger subjects demonstrated the positive-going left parietal and right frontal old/new effects described in several previous studies of source memory. By contrast, analogous ERPs from older subjects contained a large left-lateralized negative effect that overshadowed the positive-going effects evident in the young. No age-related differences in either parietal or frontal ERP old/new effects were detected at electrode sites overlying the right hemisphere. It is possible that the age-related ERP differences observed in this task primarily reflect the use of different kinds of information as a basis for source judgments
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