Literature about cognitive aging has reported an increase of false memories in the elderly. A useful paradigm for investigating false memories, is the DRM paradigm (Deese, 1959 ; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In this paradigm, participants study a list of words highly associated to a non-presented critical item. The use of the DRM paradigm allowed to study the effects of aging on the production of false memories. Findings of these studies using this paradigm indicate that older adults produce more false memories in free recall than younger adults.
Diverse explanatory theories such as the Fuzzy-Trace theory or Distinctiveness Heuristic were proposed to try to explain this phenomenon. It would appear that during the encoding and/or during the retrieval, the elderly would poorly succeed in using the distinctive processes (Smith, Lozito & Bayen, 2005). Thus, according to the chosen theorical model, this absence of distinctiveness would decrease the performances of retrieval in the older adults.
Therefore, promoting the distinctiveness during the encoding should allow to reduce or to cancel this difference in the production of false memories between younger and older adults.
Then, numerous researches have studied the effects of various encoding conditions on the production of false memories, in particular by diversifying the modalities of presentation of the material in the DRM paradigm. Studies then showed that a visual presentation provided more distinctive features than an auditive presentation and so allowed to reduce the production of false memories. However, the gap in performances between younger and older adults remained similar.
The purpose of this research is to study the effect of the presentation of items in the DRM paradigm in the form of “dictation” (i.e. new modality of presentation). Indeed, according to the “Translation Hypothesis” of Conway and Gathercole (1990), the memorization of an information would be increased when processes of translation are involved. The latter would favor the establishment of distinctive features in memory (during the learning of items). On that basis, the condition writing (dictation) should thus favor a better memorization of items.
To our knowledge, this modality of presentation was not studied within the framework of normal aging.
Thus, the effects of three different modalities from presentations of items (visual, auditory and dictation) on the false memories in young and old participants will be compared in this work.
References
Conway, M. A., & Gathercole, S.E. (1990). Writing and long-term memory: Evidence for a “translation” hypothesis. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 42(3), 513-527. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14640749008401235
Deese, J. (1959). On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 58, 17-22.
Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K.B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words non presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 21(4), 803-814. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.21.4.803
Smith, R. E., Lozito, J. P., & Bayen, U. J. (2005). Adult age differences in distinctive processing: The modality effect on false recall. Psychology and Aging, 30(3), 486-492. DOI:10.1037/0882-7974.20.3.486