False Recognition and Source Attribution for Actions of an Emotional Event in Older and Younger Adults

Abstract

In two experiments recognition of actions of a robbery presented in a video was examined in older and younger adults. In both experiments older adults had more false alarms and showed less accurate recognition than younger adults. In addition, when participants were asked in Experiment 1 to indicate Remember/Know/Guess judgments for actions they considered true, older adults accepted more false actions with Remember judgments. And when participants were asked in Experiment 2 to attribute the source (i.e., perpetrator), the older adults were less able to attribute actions that occurred during the robbery to their correct sources. Furthermore, we found a robust positive correlation between source attribution ability and recognition accuracy. Thus, source-memory deficits may contribute to older adults' false memories in real-life eyewitness situations.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a predoctoral grant of the University of the Basque Country to the first author and partially by grant BSO2000-1417 from the Ministerio de Ciencia & Tecnología (Spain) to Elvira Garcia-Bajos and Malen Migueles.

Notes

Note. Values are means, with standard deviations (in parentheses).

^a Subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III.

^b Subtest of the Primary Mental Aptitude Test.

Note. Standard deviations in parenthesis.

Note. Standard deviations in parenthesis.

^a Total number of old items attributed to the correct source/total number of old items correctly identified as old (hits).