Following the 90’s scandals about daughters suing their own parents because of false memories created by psychanalysts, psychologists are attached to find how these deformed or non existent memories are able to appear and stay in people memories and especially for elderly people.
Theorical aspects
A false memory is a deformed or non existent memory which is include in our memory system. People strongly think that what the remember is the truth.
Many aspects can explain why older people are more inclined to create more false memories, structures of the brain are more fragile with years, strategies are not as good as they were, and social impact as stereotype thereat can have an insidious but concrete impact on elders’ memory capabilities (Craik & Bialystok, 2006).
To find how those qualitative errors of memory happens, scholars created numerous paradigms to point out people’s errors and objectify false memories. One of the most known is the Deese Rodieger McDermott paradigm (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). As called as DRM paradigm, this experiment consists in the presentation of lists of nouns semantically linked in order to create an association with a strongly linked word that is not presented in the list (critical lure). Then the experimenters ask to participant to recall or recognized the list’s words, a false memory is counted as such when the critical lure is recognized or recalled.
Starting with the fact that people live longer, brain are damaged with years and a bunch of tools capable to point out memory errors, researchers tried to find out a way to lessen false memories in the general population and more specifically in the aging one. In the present study we used the works of Geracci and Miller (2013) who successfully increase the number of informations learned and their quality in an aging population of participant by making them pass a primal task.
By proving the efficiency of this method, Geraci and Miller (2013), opened a new path to explore a new easily applicable method to lessen false memories during neuropsychological evaluation, and this, is the purpose of the present study.
Method
37 young participants and 36 older participants participate to this study. Every participant successfully filled cognitive questionnaires to check if they have the enough cognitive capacities to be include in the study.
Then, every participant was invited to pass a first DRM task. After the DRM, which will be use as a baseline, an easy cognitive task is present to every participant, this task was constructed to be easily achieve by everybody. This particular task is the DMS48 (Barbeau and al., 2004), a visual memory test.
Finally, a second DRM task and a set of cognitive and emotional scales were presented to the participants in order to get their impressions and more data to understand this effect. The second DRM was made in order to compare our baseline with another data after the success of the easy cognitive task.
At last, a debriefing and explanations were discussed with the participant in order to end properly the experiment.
Results
We conduct statistical analysis to check if the experiment worked properly. A 2X2 ANOVA was conduct and didn’t show solid results. Thus, more preciseful analyses show that our experiment worked.
Indeed, we point out a clear and strong effect on the recognition of false memories in the elders’ population. This effect is so strong that elders’ memory performances almost normalized to the youngers’ ones.
We do so observe a strong effect of the achievement of an easy cognitive task on elders’ false memories recognition.
Discussion
With the results of the present study, we point out that false memories can be lassen by achieving a simple cognitive task as the DMS48. These results are congruent with what Geraci and Miller found (2013).
This effect is so a good way to avoid memory errors during a neuropsychological examination, and more specifically during a memory test.
However, a strong limit appears to us. We find that doing 2 DRM in one experiment can lead participant to understand how the manipulation is working and making them use more strategies adapt to the context of a DRM paradigm. In addition, we still do not understand how this effect is working. We do need to lead further experiment in order to avoid this limit and find more results oriented to the comprehension of this mechanism.
Vocabulary:
Stereotype threat: menace de stereotype
Scholars: chercheurs
Baseline: une ligne de base
To lead an experiment : mener une experience
To point out : mettre en évidence
References :
Barbeau, E., Didic, M., Tramoni, E., Felician, O., Joubert, S., Sontheimer, A., … Poncet, M. (2004). Evaluation of visual recognition memory in MCI patients. Neurology, 62(8), 1317‑1322. https://doi.org/10.1212/01.WNL.0000120548.24298.DB
Craik, F. I. M., & Bialystok, E. (2006). Cognition through the lifespan : Mechanisms of change. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(3), 131‑138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2006.01.007
Geraci, L., & Miller, T. M. (2013). Improving older adults’ memory performance using prior task success. Psychology and Aging, 28(2), 340‑345. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030332
Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories : Remembering words not 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