When true memories suppress false memories: Effects of ageing

After studying a list of words that are all associated to a nonpresented target word, people often falsely recall or recognise the nonpresented target. Previous studies have shown that such false memories are greatly reduced when study lists are presented and tested several times compared to a single study/test trial. We report that older adults, who are sometimes more susceptible to memory distortions than are young adults, failed to exhibit any reduction in false recall or false recognition after five study/test trials compared to a single trial. By contrast, younger adults showed robust suppression of false memories after five study/test trials compared to a single trial. These results are consistent with the idea that older adults rely on memory for the general features or gist of studied materials, but tend not to encode or to retrieve specific details of individual items.