Influences of ageing and cognitive impairment on false memory recall
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Influences of Ageing and Cognitive Impairment on False Memory Recall
IRAS ID
168580
Contact name
David Playfoot
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 27 days
Research summary
This study aims to investigate false memories in healthy ageing, and in individuals with cognitive impairment. Previous research has shown that people will often 'remember' a word that was not actually presented (known as the lure) in a list they have been asked to learn if the items that are presented all share a common meaning (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). The probability of reporting the lure depends on list length - a list of 12 semantically-related words will more likely cause a recall error than a list of only 6 words.
Healthy ageing is usually accompanied by problems with memory, and there are a number of theoretical accounts for what causes this decline. Two of the current theories of cognitive ageing, the transmission deficit hypothesis and the inhibition deficit hypothesis, would predict opposing patterns of responses on the false memory elicitation task. Relative to young adults' performance on the same length of word list, one theory would expect that old age would cause more lures to be recalled and the other would expect fewer lures to be recalled. This project aims to test these predictions with different age groups; young, young-old and old-old. All participants will be presented with groups of lists of 6, 9, 12 or 15 words, each related to a single non-presented lure. After reading the lists, participants will be asked to recall the words they have seen.
All participants are expected to recall a greater proportion of lures following presentation of longer lists. Age group is likely to be a factor in how many lures are recalled for a given list length. An additional group of participants who have slightly greater than normal memory problems will also be tested. This will allow for assessment of whether cognitive impairment is qualitatively different from healthy ageing.
REC name
London - South East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/LO/0531
Date of REC Opinion
17 Mar 2015
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion