Effects Of Age On Rate Of False Recognitionâ€Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Explain on Effects Of Age On Rate Of False Recognition? Answer: Publish Introduction Memory is a cognitive, information-processing system which enables us to store and retrieve information over time (Zimbardo, Johnson, Hamilton, 2014). Although our memories are normally quite reliable, it is known that sometimes our memories can be susceptible to various kinds of errors and distortions (Konkle, Brady, Alvarez, 2012). For example, Gras et al., (2011) found that when presenting participants with lists of thematically-related words with a critical but unpresented lure (e.g., the words thread, pin, eye, sewing, sharp, and point are presented, but not the critical associated word needle) participants would falsely recall the critical lure. A more recent study by Gras et al., (2011) used this sort of test (called the DRM paradigm) to establish that older adults are more likely to falsely recall the critical lure than younger adults. Based on past findings, the present study attempts to replicate the finding that older adults are more susceptible to false memories by using lists of words and a recognition test. The experimental hypothesis predicts that older participants will have a higher rate of false recognition than younger participants while the null hypothesis predicts that there will be no difference in the rate of false recognition between older and younger adults. The experiment employed a between-participants design. The independent variable was older and younger adults and the dependent variable was the number of false recognized words. Participants Twenty adults aged 22 to 61 years with a mean age of 40 years, were randomly assigned (10 each) to one of two experimental conditions. The range of young participants was 22 to 30 while older was 50 to 61 years. All participants had good English skills. Materials/Apparatus Signed consent form Instruction sheet List of words for memorization Response sheets Excel files for participants information and calculation of means and t-scores Pen for writing down list of words. Procedure Participants were asked their ages and then assigned to either older or younger adults category. Instruction were given to them and their understanding ensured. Before the test consent were obtained. Participants were presented with related words where they were supposed to listen and after the reading of the words, each participant was supposed to write down as many words as possible they could remember from the list on the response sheet. The false recognized words from each participant were then recorded by the experimenter on the t-test excel sheet. Results Table 1 below shows the mean scores for the older and younger adults. The older adults got a mean score of 4.30 which was higher as compared to the younger adults with a mean score of 2.00. Table 1: Mean number of falsely recognized words Participant age group Number of falsely recognised words Older adults 4.30 Younger adults 2.00 Results of an independent sample t-test between younger adults and older adults were t(18) = 3.737, p=.05 for a two-tailed hypothesis (Appendix E). The table of critical values of t (Appendix F) for the corresponding degrees of freedom (df) gave a value of 2.101, which is lower than that of the calculated t-value in comparison. This shows that there is a statistically considerable difference between the two experimental groups. Based on this result, there is enough evidence to accept the experimental hypothesis and the null hypothesis is consequently rejected. Discussion This study aimed to investigate the effect of age in false recognition of related words among adults. The results of mean scored and independent sample t-test shows a significant difference between the younger and older adults in terms of the number of false recognized words among them. This endorsed the experimental hypothesis which declared that age has an influence in false recognition among adults and identifies with Cann, McRae Katz (2011) which showed that older adults are more vulnerable as compared to younger adults to false recognition. A study done by Gras et al., (2011) maintains that false recognition is affected by age greatly and found that older adults were more likely to fall on the trap of false recognition compared to younger adults. However, the study also states that as much as older adults were more likely to give a false recognition the study also shows that the number of non-false recognition among younger and older adults were almost of equal number and there was no significant difference among them. The results extend the domain of robust false recognition to detailed color pictures and demonstrate that, particularly in older adults, false recognition sometimes involves similarity-based errors rather than source confusions regarding whether specific lure items had been presented or were generated spontaneously during the study task. In conclusion, word recognition is an important task of our memories and false recognition is expected from all ages, this is supported by Cann, McRae Katz (2011) which states that as much as older adults are prone to false recognition of words even younger adults also fall in the trap of false recognition of words. References Cann, D. R., McRae, K., Katz, A. N. (2011). False recall in the Deese- Roediger-McDermott paradigm the roles of gist and associative strength. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(8), 1-33. Gras, D., Tardieu, H., Piolino, P., Nicolas, S. (2011). Presentation modality effect on false memories in younger and older adults: the use of an inference paradigm. 19(1), 92-102. Konkle, T., Brady, T. F., Alvarez, G. A. (2012). Conceptual distinctiveness supports detailed visual long-term memory for real-world objects. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 558578. Norman, K. A., Schacter, D. L. (n.d.). False recognition in younger and older adults: Exploring the characteristics of illusory memories. Memory Cognition, 25(6), 838-848.