Abstract
Most studies targeting age-association of memory functions report a decline in recognition hits and an increase in false alarms. The goal of the present study was to assess these findings in tasks with day-to-day relevance. We investigated healthy young (YA; age 26.90 ± 3.55 years) and old (OA; age 69.80 ± 5.85 years) adults. Participants were asked to watch six news and six commercials and complete a recognition task relating to the information presented in the videos. OA had a lower hit rate in both news and commercials compared to YA. However, the number of false alarms (FA) was the same in both age groups. Applying signal detection theory, we found age differences in discriminability for both news and commercials paradigm. The groups showed no differences in bias and both chose a liberal answering tendency. We interpret our finding as a result of complex recognition items in an ecologically valid task. Multi-feature items offer an advantage in correct rejection—it is enough to know that at least one feature of an item is false. This benefit does not extend to hits, where all features of an item need to be recognized. This indicates that recognition memory of naturalistic stimuli in OA is porous, but not distorted.
Highlights
Aging goes along with a decline in various cognitive functions such as visual-constructive abilities, processing speed, and memory (Di Carlo et al, 2000; Park et al, 2002; MacDonald et al, 2004; Royall et al, 2005; Ardila, 2007)
In contrast to conventional recognition memory paradigms that rely on two answer choices, we have introduced negated statements to diminish older adult’s reliance on gist (Schacter et al, 1997; Tun et al, 1998; Dennis et al, 2007) by encouraging a more conscious decision making process, which has been reported to reduce the number of false alarms in older adults (Multhaup, 1995; Grady and Craik, 2000)
There was a significant difference in the years of formal education among participants (YA 14.19 ± 2.14; older adults (OA) 11.35 ± 2.60; t(39) = 3.830, p < 0.001)
Summary
Aging goes along with a decline in various cognitive functions such as visual-constructive abilities, processing speed, and memory (Di Carlo et al, 2000; Park et al, 2002; MacDonald et al, 2004; Royall et al, 2005; Ardila, 2007). Episodic memory performance undergoes the most pronounced changes with increasing age (Souchay et al, 2000; Daselaar et al, 2003; Kramer et al, 2003; Nilsson, 2003; Salthouse, 2016). Concerning memory processes, literature suggests that the most drastic deterioration occurs in recall (Hultsch, 1969; Petersen et al, 1992; Hertzog et al, 2010), whereas recognition is only moderately affected (Jacoby, 1999; Ratcliff et al, 2004; Spaniol et al, 2006; Van Ocker et al, 2017). A recent meta-analysis of 232 studies by Fraundorf et al (2019) has reported that
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