Watson Jason M, McDermott Kathleen B, Balota David A
Department of Psychology, Campus Box 1125, Washington University, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2004 Jan;32(1):135-41. doi: 10.3758/bf03195826.
On each of five study-test trials, young and old adults attempted to memorize the same list of 60 words (e.g., bed, rest, awake), which were blocked according to their convergence on four corresponding associates. Half of the participants in each age group were given an explicit warning about the DRM paradigm prior to encoding and were asked to attempt to avoid recalling any associated but nonpresented words (e.g., sleep). Lists were presented auditorily at either a fast (1,250 msec/word) or a slow (2,500 msec/word) rate. Without a warning, the probability of veridical recall across trials increased for both age groups; however, the probability of false recall across trials decreased only for young adults. When a warning about false recall was provided, young adults virtually eliminated false recall by the second trial. Even though old adults also used warnings to reduce false recall on Trial 1, they were still unable to decrease false memories across the remaining four study-test trials. Old adults also reduced false recall more with slow than with fast presentation rates. Taken together, these findings suggest that old adults have a breakdown in spontaneous, self-initiated source monitoring as reflected by little change in false recall across study-test trials but a preserved ability to use experimenter-provided warnings or slow presentation rates to reduce false memories.
在五次学习 - 测试试验的每一次中，年轻和年长的成年人都试图记住相同的60个单词列表（例如，床、休息、清醒），这些单词根据它们与四个相应联想词的关联程度进行了分组。每个年龄组的一半参与者在编码前被告知关于错误记忆范式（DRM范式）的信息，并被要求尝试避免回忆任何相关但未呈现的单词（例如，睡眠）。单词列表以快速（1250毫秒/单词）或慢速（2500毫秒/单词）的听觉方式呈现。在没有警告的情况下，两个年龄组在各次试验中正确回忆的概率都增加了；然而，各次试验中错误回忆的概率仅在年轻成年人中有所下降。当提供关于错误回忆的警告时，年轻成年人在第二次试验时几乎消除了错误回忆。尽管年长成年人在第一次试验时也使用警告来减少错误回忆，但在剩下的四次学习 - 测试试验中，他们仍然无法减少错误记忆。年长成年人在慢速呈现时比在快速呈现时更能减少错误回忆。综合来看，这些发现表明，年长成年人在自发的、自我启动的源监测方面存在障碍，这表现为在学习 - 测试试验中错误回忆几乎没有变化，但他们仍具备利用实验者提供的警告或慢速呈现来减少错误记忆的能力。
