Memory for Actions of an Event: Older and Younger Adults Compared

Previous studies have shown increased false memory effects in older compared to younger adults. To investigate this phenomenon in event memory, in the present study, the authors presented younger and older adults with a robbery. A distinction was made between verbal and visual actions of the event, and recognition and subjective experience of retrieval (remember/know/guess judgments) were analyzed. Although there were no differences in hits, older adults accepted more false information as true and, consequently, showed less accurate recognition than younger adults. Moreover, older adults were more likely than younger adults to accompany these errors with remember judgments. Young adults accepted fewer false verbal actions than visual ones and awarded fewer remember judgments to their false alarms for verbal than for visual actions. Older adults, however, did not show this effect of type of information. These results suggest that aging is a relevant factor in memory for real-life eyewitness situations.