Boutté, Danielle L.

Event memory studies have shown that older adults typically have poorer memories for events than do younger adults. Unfortunately, these studies tested memory for events that contained only young adults as the actors. It could be that the younger adults remembered the events better due to an own-age bias. One particular type of event memory error is called unconscious transference. In unconscious transference, a binding error results in false conjunction memories. Several studies have shown that older adults are more likely to make these errors. This study aims to look more closely at the effects of own-age bias on face recognition and conjunction errors made in memory for events. Younger adults were tested on their memory for both younger and older adults seen performing simple actions in video clips as well as in "mug shot" photograph tests.