The illusion of the positive: The impact of natural and induced mood on older adults' false recall

ABSTRACT

Recent research suggests that affective and motivational processes can influence age differences in memory. In the current study, we examine the impact of both natural and induced mood state on age differences in false recall. Older and younger adults performed a version of the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM; Roediger & McDermott, 1995, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 803) false memory paradigm in either their natural mood state or after a positive or negative mood induction. Results indicated that, after accounting for age differences in basic cognitive function, age-related differences in positive mood during the testing session were related to increased false recall in older adults. Inducing older adults into a positive mood also exacerbated age differences in false memory. In contrast, veridical recall did not appear to be systematically influenced by mood. Together, these results suggest that positive mood states can impact older adults' information processing and potentially increase underlying cognitive age differences.

Keywords:

• Emotion
• Mood
• Affect
• Memory
• Social cognition

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health (grant number R01 AG020153). The authors wish to thank the following people for help with data collection efforts: Sara Bergman, Christine Casovia, Cassie Dufay, Gilda Ennis, Jake Finan, Viveka Gondha, Brenda Mills, Jenna Ray, Katie Shore, and Carol Sullivan-Riddle.

Notes

¹ The end-of-DRM mood measures were not significantly correlated with performance on the basic cognitive function tests, so we do not believe that lingering mood effects were influencing performance on these scores. The basic cognitive function tests were also uncorrelated with the ‘trait’ mood measures.

² Initial analyses including Stroop performance indicated that Stroop did not load very highly on the general cognitive factor (loading of .3) compared to the other factors (loadings of .6–.8), and so we excluded the Stroop from the analysis. However, using the factor derived by including Stroop did not change the results of the subsequent analyses.

³ We did not control for general cognitive ability in these memory analyses; doing so, however, did not change the results.