Repetition-induced belief in the elderly: Rehabilitating age-related memory deficits

This research examines the impact of age-related deficits in recognition an d source memory on repetition-induced increases in belief in fictitious sta tements (the "truth effect"). Young and elderly subjects made recognition-m emory judgments and rated the credibility of new and previously presented s tatements. Experiment 1 assessed the level of memory impairment in the elde rly, as compared to the young, and its influence on the truth effect. The e lderly, who had a greater tendency to make false-alarm errors in recognitio n and had poorer source memory for the claims, were more susceptible to the truth-inflating effect of repetition than were the young. Deeper(semantic vs. perceptual) processing was ineffective in reducing age-related deficits in memory or sensitivity to repetition-induced beliefs. Experiment 2 demon strated that an imagery encoding task did provide more environmental suppor t (a greater improvement in recognition and source memory for the elderly t han the young) than did a perceptual encoding task. When both young and eld erly subjects engaged in an imagery task during encoding, their memory perf ormance was equivalent and age-related differences in the truth effect were abolished. Thus, it appears that the elderly are more susceptible to the t ruth-inflating effect of repetition, and this effect seems to be mediated v ia their poor memory. However, if memory is enhanced using environmental su pport, the elderly are no longer especially vulnerable to the truth effect.