The study, which is supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging, is in press for publication in a forthcoming issue of the journal Cognitive Neuropsychology. Other authors on the study are Michael J. Cortese, Janet M. Duchek, David Adams, Henry L. Roediger III, Kathleen B. McDermott and Benjamin E. Yerys, all of Washington University in St. Louis.
It's no secret that older adults often express frustration at their increasing inability to recall seemingly simple things, but this study suggests that older people -- and to a much greater extent those individuals struggling with Alzheimer's -- should also be somewhat skeptical about the accuracy of even those things that they think they remember quite well.
"Our findings, along with other studies, demonstrate that older people are very susceptible to the creation of false memories," Balota said, "which is interesting because it suggests that memory problems associated with aging are not the result of a broad general decline in all memory-related functions, but are due to sharp declines in some cognitive areas, specifically portions of the brain that control the strategic processing of information once it is recalled from memory."
Testing memory
Balota's study is based on an analysis of false recall and recognition rates
among 159 individuals who were divided into five groups: healthy college
students, healthy older adults about age 70, healthy old-old adults about age
85; and two groups of older adults with either very mild or mild symptoms of
Alzheimer's related dementia, who volunteered to participate in studies at
Washington University's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center.
Subjects were read a list of 12 associated words that strongly suggest another
non-presented critical targe
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Contact: Gerry Everding
gerry_everding@aismail.wustl.edu
314-935-6375
Washington University in St. Louis
4-Jun-1999