Memory--Age factors

The types of intrusion errors (Prior List, Semantically Related, and Unrelated)
made on the LASSI-L verbal memory task were compared across three diagnostic groups
(N = 160, 61 % female), Cognitively Normal (CN), amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment
(aMCI), and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Errors related to Proactive, Recovery from
Proactive, and Retroactive Interference were also analyzed, as well as the relationship of
errors to Amyloid load, a biomarker of AD. Results suggest that the types of error made
indicated the level of cognitive decline. It appears that as deficits increase, impaired
semantic networks result in the simultaneous activation of items that are semantically
related to LASSI-L words. In the aMCI group, providing a semantic cue resulted in an
increased production of Semantically Related intrusions. Unrelated intrusions occurred
rarely, although, a small number occurred even in the CN group, warranting further
investigation. Amyloid load correlated with all intrusion errors.

In the current experiment, a group of 10-year-olds and a group of young adults
watched a series of short video clips of different women performing different actions.
One week later, participants were tested on their ability to discriminate the old videos
from distracter videos, which included new actor/old action videos, new action/old actor
videos, novel combinations of familiar actors and actions, as well as entirely new videos.
The results provide evidence that the ability to accurately bind actors with their actions
reaches adult levels by age 10. The results are discussed in terms of the brain areas
involved in memory binding tasks, as well as implications for various areas of study
within forensic psychology, particularly unconscious transference.

Everyday individuals experience problems in accurately remembering who did what in an event. In order to have an accurate memory for an event of this type, an individual needs to remember the person who performed the action, the action itself, and the pairing of these two pieces of information. If these pieces of information are not bound together correctly, the end result is an inaccurate memory for an event. This study examined the ability of young and older adults to bind people and their actions together in memory. Though both age groups were more likely to falsely recognize novel combinations of familiar actors and actions than they were to falsely recognize novel actions, the older participants were even more likely to falsely recognize these novel combinations. The misbinding of actors and actions may thus contribute to the problem of mistaken eyewitness identification.