Department of Psychology, City, University of London, UK.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2020 Mar 9;75(4):743-752. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gby064.
Recent research has shown that false memories can have a positive consequence on human cognition in both children and young adults. The present experiment investigated whether false memories could have similar positive effects by priming solutions to insight-based problems in healthy older adults and people with Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Participants were asked to solve compound remote associate task (CRAT) problems, half of which had been preceded by the presentation of Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists whose critical lures (CL) were also the solutions to those problems.
The results showed that regardless of cognitive ability, when the CL was falsely recognized, CRAT problems were solved more often and reliably faster than problems that were not primed by a DRM list. When the CL was not falsely recognized, CRAT problem solution rates and times were no different from when there was no DRM priming.
These findings are consistent with predictions from theories of associative activation and demonstrate the importance of automatic spreading activation processes in memory across the life span.
最近的研究表明，错误记忆在儿童和年轻人的认知中可能产生积极的结果。本实验通过启动健康老年人和阿尔茨海默病（AD）患者基于洞察力的问题的解决方案，研究错误记忆是否具有类似的积极效果。
要求参与者解决复合远程联想任务（CRAT）问题，其中一半问题之前呈现了 Deese/Roediger-McDermott（DRM）列表，其关键诱饵（CL）也是这些问题的解决方案。
结果表明，无论认知能力如何，当 CL 被错误识别时，CRAT 问题的解决频率和可靠性都比没有 DRM 列表提示的问题更高。当 CL 没有被错误识别时，CRAT 问题的解决率和时间与没有 DRM 提示时没有区别。
这些发现与联想激活理论的预测一致，证明了自动扩散激活过程在整个生命周期中的记忆中的重要性。
