ABSTRACT Episodic memory enables individuals to recollect past events as well as imagine possible future scenarios. Although the episodic specificity of past events declines as people grow older, it is unknown whether the same is true for future events. In an adapted version of the Autobiographical Interview, young and older participants generated past and future events. Transcriptions were segmented into distinct details that were classified as either internal (episodic) or external. Older adults generated fewer internal details than younger adults for past events, a result replicating previous findings; more important, we show that this deficit extends to future events. Furthermore, the number of internal details and the number of external details both showed correlations between past and future events. Finally, the number of internal details generated by older adults correlated with their relational memory abilities, a finding consistent with the constructive-episodic-simulation hypothesis , which holds that simulation of future episodes requires a system that can flexibly recombine details from past events into novel scenarios.

Abstract Two experiments explored whether the higher vulnerability to false memories in the DRM (J. Deese, 1959; H. L. Roediger & K. B. McDermott, 1995) paradigm in older compared to young adults reflects a deficit in source monitoring. In both experiments, adding together the number of falsely recalled critical lures and the number of critical lures produced on a post-recall test asking participants to report items that they had thought of but did not recall, indicated that the critical lures were activated during the experiment equally often in young and older adults. However, older adults were more likely than young adults to say that they had actually heard the lures. When strongly encouraged to examine the origin of memories (Experiment 2), the warning substantially reduced false recall in young but not older adults. These results are consistent with the idea that older adults have more difficulty later identifying the source of information that was activated as a consequence of intact semantic activation processes.

Compared to young adults, older adults show not only a reduction in true memories but also an increase in false memories. We investigated the neural bases of these age effects using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a false memory task that resembles the Deese oediger cDermott (DRM) paradigm. Young and older participants were scanned during a word recognition task that included studied words and new words that were strongly associated with studied words (critical lures). During correct recognition of studied words (true memory), older adults showed weaker activity than young adults in the hippocampus but stronger activity than young adults in the retrosplenial cortex. The hippocampal reduction is consistent with age-related deficits in recollection, whereas the retrosplenial increase suggests compensatory recruitment of alternative recollection-related regions. During incorrect recognition of critical lures (false memory), older adults displayed stronger activity than young adults in the left lateral temporal cortex, a region involved in semantic processing and semantic gist. Taken together, the results suggest that older adults' deficits in true memories reflect a decline in recollection processes mediated by the hippocampus, whereas their increased tendency to have false memories reflects their reliance on semantic gist mediated by the lateral temporal cortex.

When remembering past events or imagining possible future events, older adults generate fewer episodic details than do younger adults. These results support the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis: deficits in retrieving episodic details underlie changes during memory and imagination. To examine the extent of this age-related reduction in specificity, we compared performance on memory and imagination tasks to a picture description task that does not require episodic memory. In two experiments, older adults exhibited comparable specificity reductions across all conditions. These findings emphasize the need to consider age-related changes in imagination and memory in a broader theoretical context.

In this study,we explored the differences of the subjects' recognition to the earlier events in different age groups and the differences of self-confidence in misinformation effect.The results showed that in the recognition test,the subjects were significantly more inaccurate on misled items than they were on control items.Essentially,there did exist misinformation effect,and the elderly were more vulnerable to the misinformation items than the younger.In the self-confidence test,the age difference played no significant role,whether they were misleading items or control items.The elderly and the younger had the same high self-confidence on the right and wrong response.

本研究对误导信息效应中不同年龄被试对最初事件再认的表现差异和自信心差异进行了探讨。结果表明:在再认成绩方面,被试对误导项目的错误反应率要高于对控制项目的错误反应率,即产生了误导信息效应,而且老年被试比年轻被试更易受误导信息的影响;在自信心方面,被试不存在年龄差异,即无论是在误导项目上,还是在控制项目上,老年被试和年轻被试对其再认的正确和错误反应有一样高的自信心。

Previous research has demonstrated that an episodic specificity induction-brief training in recollecting details of a recent experience-enhances performance on various subsequent tasks thought to draw upon episodic memory processes. Existing work has also shown that mental simulation can be beneficial for emotion regulation and coping with stressors. Here we focus on understanding how episodic detail can affect problem solving, reappraisal, and psychological well-being regarding worrisome future events. In Experiment 1, an episodic specificity induction significantly improved participants' performance on a subsequent means-end problem solving task (i.e., more relevant steps) and an episodic reappraisal task (i.e., more episodic details) involving personally worrisome future events compared with a control induction not focused on episodic specificity. Imagining constructive behaviors with increased episodic detail via the specificity induction was also related to significantly larger decreases in anxiety, perceived likelihood of a bad outcome, and perceived difficulty to cope with a bad outcome, as well as larger increases in perceived likelihood of a good outcome and indicated use of active coping behaviors compared with the control. In Experiment 2, we extended these findings using a more stringent control induction, and found preliminary evidence that the specificity induction was related to an increase in positive affect and decrease in negative affect compared with the control. Our findings support the idea that episodic memory processes are involved in means-end problem solving and episodic reappraisal, and that increasing the episodic specificity of imagining constructive behaviors regarding worrisome events may be related to improved psychological well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record

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.

Three experiments examined the recognition performance of older (60–75 yrs) and younger (17–25 yrs) adults for detailed colored pictures of objects as a function of whether the targets and lures were from previously studied categories or were unrelated (noncategorized) items. If participants had studied many exemplars from a category, they often falsely recognized lures from those categories; this false recognition effect was especially pronounced in older adults. Older and younger participants showed equivalent correct recognition of large-category targets, but older adults showed significantly reduced recognition of unrelated targets, suggesting that older adults were relying on the general conceptual and/or perceptual similarity (“gist”) of study and test items in making their recognition decisions. 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.

Imagining a counter-factual event can make subjects more confident than it actually occurres. It is called Imagination Inflation. The article introduces the experiment method, studies, theories and implication of Imagination Inflation.

文章就近年来错误记忆研究中的新领域———“想象膨胀”进行介绍。“想象膨胀”是一种源自生活的错误记忆现象,它 是指通过想象能提高一个人确信某一未发生事件发生过的程度。本文对想象膨胀研究范式、现状、相关理论及其研究意义进行 一一介绍,为进一步的研究提供参考。

During the course of cognitive aging,the structure and function of brain change at different levels.Brain imaging techniques have become important means for the neural mechanism research of cognitive aging since 1970s.Functional imaging studies have consistently found two "overactivation" models in regional brain area in the elderly:hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults(HAROLD) and posterior-anterior shift in aging(PASA).The theories and hypothesis relating to the two models,including compensation theory and dedifferentiation theory are reviewed,and the neural mechanism of cognitive aging is explained from different aspects in this paper.

Two experiments are reported in which subjects viewed films of automobiled accidents and then answered questions about events occurring in the films. The question, “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” elicited higher estimates of speed than questions which used the verbs collided, bumped, contacted, or hit in place of smashed. On a retest one week later, those subjects who received the verb smashed were more likely to say “yes” to the question, “Did you see any broken glass?”, even though broken glass was not present in the film. These results are consistent with the view that the questions asked subsequent to an event can cause a reconstruction in one's memory of that event.

Abstract Abstract According to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis, remembering past experiences and imagining future experiences both rely heavily on episodic memory. However, recent research indicates that non-episodic processes such as descriptive ability also influence memory and imagination. We recently found that an episodic specificity induction - brief training in recollecting details of past experiences - enhanced detail generation on memory and imagination tasks but not a picture description task, and thereby concluded that the induction can dissociate episodic processes involved in remembering the past and imagining the future from those non-episodic processes involved in description. To evaluate the generality of our previous findings and to examine the role of generative search in producing those findings, we modified our paradigm so that word cues replaced picture cues, and a word comparison task that requires generation of sentences and word definitions replaced picture description. Young adult participants received either a specificity induction or one of two control inductions before completing the memory, imagination, and word comparison tasks. Replicating and extending our previous work, we found that the specificity induction increased detail generation in memory and imagination without having an effect on word comparison. The induction's selective effect on memory and imagination stemmed from an increase in internal (i.e., on-topic and episodic) details and had no effect on external (e.g., off-topic or semantic) details. The results point to the efficacy of the specificity induction for isolating episodic processes involved in remembering the past and imagining the future even when a non-episodic task requires generative search.

Abstract Recent behavioral work suggests that an episodic specificity induction-brief training in recollecting the details of a past experience-enhances performance on subsequent tasks that rely on episodic retrieval, including imagining future experiences, solving open-ended problems, and thinking creatively. Despite these far-reaching behavioral effects, nothing is known about the neural processes impacted by an episodic specificity induction. Related neuroimaging work has linked episodic retrieval with a core network of brain regions that supports imagining future experiences. We tested the hypothesis that key structures in this network are influenced by the specificity induction. Participants received the specificity induction or one of two control inductions and then generated future events and semantic object comparisons during fMRI scanning. After receiving the specificity induction compared with the control, participants exhibited significantly more activity in several core network regions during the construction of imagined events over object comparisons, including the left anterior hippocampus, right inferior parietal lobule, right posterior cingulate cortex, and right ventral precuneus. Induction-related differences in the episodic detail of imagined events significantly modulated induction-related differences in the construction of imagined events in the left anterior hippocampus and right inferior parietal lobule. Resting-state functional connectivity analyses with hippocampal and inferior parietal lobule seed regions and the rest of the brain also revealed significantly stronger core network coupling following the specificity induction compared with the control. These findings provide evidence that an episodic specificity induction selectively targets episodic processes that are commonly linked to key core network regions, including the hippocampus.

Abstract Roediger and McDermott (1995) demonstrated that when subjects hear a list of associates to a "theme word" that has itself not been presented, they frequently claim to recollect having heard the nonpresented theme word on the study list. In Experiment 1, we found that asking subjects to explain their remember responses, by writing down exactly what they remembered about the item's presentation at study, did not significantly diminish the rate of remember false alarms to nonpresented theme words. We also found that older adults were relatively more susceptible than younger adults to this false-recognition effect. Subjects' explanations suggested that both veridical and illusory memories were predominantly composed of associative information as opposed to sensory and contextual detail. In Experiment 2, we obtained quantitative evidence for this conclusion, using a paradigm in which subjects were asked focused questions about the contents of their recollective experience. Lastly, we found that both younger and older adults recalled more sensory and contextual detail in conjunction with studied items than with nonpresented theme words, although these differences were less pronounced in older adults.

In the imagination inflation procedure of Garry, Manning, Loftus, and Sherman (1996), subjects rated a list of events in terms of how likely each was to have occurred in their childhood. Two weeks later, some of the events were imagined; control events were not. The subjects then rated the likelihood of occurrence for each event a second time. Garry et al. (1996) reported that the act of imagining the target events led to increased ratings of likelihood. This finding has been interpreted as indicating that false events can be suggestively planted in memory by simply having people imagine them. The present study tests and confirms the hypothesis that the results that have been attributed to imagination inflation are simply a statistical artifact of regression toward the mean. The experiment of Garry et al. (1996) was reproduced (with some procedural changes), using younger and older adults. The results of Garry et al. (1996) were replicated; likelihood ratings for events initially rated low in likelihood did increase from Time 1 to Time 2. However, ratings for events initially rated high in likelihood decreased under the same conditions, and these results were consistent with the imagined target events, the target events not imagined, and the nontarget events.

In the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, subjects study lists of words that are designed to elicit the recall of an associatively related critical item. The 55 lists we have developed provide levels of false recall ranging from .01 to .65, and understanding this variability should provide a key to understanding this memory illusion. Using a simultaneous multiple regression analysis, we assessed the contribution of seven factors in creating false recall of critical items in the DRM paradigm. This analysis accounted for approximately 68% of the variance in false recall, with two main predictors: associative connections from the study words to the critical item ( r +.73; semipartial r +.60) and recallability of the lists ( r +.43; semipartial r -.34). Taken together, the variance in false recall captured by these predictors accounted for 84% of the variance that can be explained, given the reliability of the false recall measures ( r =.90). Therefore, the results of this analysis strongly constrain theories of false memory in this paradigm, suggesting that at least two factors determine the propensity of DRM lists to elicit false recall. The results fit well within the theoretical framework postulating that both semantic activation of the critical item and strategic monitoring processes influence the probability of false recall and false recognition in this paradigm.

Adult age differences have been documented on a wide variety of cognitive variables, but the reasons for these differences are still poorly understood. In this article, I describe several findings that will need to be incorporated into eventual explanations of the phenomenon of cognitive aging. Despite common assumptions to the contrary, age-related declines in measures of cognitive functioning (a) are relatively large, (b) begin in early adulthood, (c) are evident in several different types of cognitive abilities, and (d) are not always accompanied by increases in between-person variability.

This article focuses on the neural and cognitive processes that support imagining or simulating future events, a topic that has recently emerged in the forefront of cognitive neuroscience. We begin by considering concepts of simulation from a number of areas of psychology and cognitive neuroscience in order to place our use of the term in a broader context. We then review neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and cognitive studies that have examined future-event simulation and its relation to episodic memory. This research supports the idea that simulating possible future events depends on much of the same neural machinery, referred to here as a core network, as does remembering past events. After discussing several theoretical accounts of the data, we consider applications of work on episodic simulation for research concerning clinical populations suffering from anxiety or depression. Finally, we consider other aspects of future-oriented thinking that we think are related to episodic simulation, including planning, prediction, and remembering intentions. These processes together comprise what we have termed "the prospective brain," whose primary function is to use past experiences to anticipate future events.

Abstract The ability to mentally simulate hypothetical scenarios is a rapidly growing area of research in both psychology and neuroscience. Episodic future thought, or the ability to simulate specific personal episodes that may potentially occur in the future, represents one facet of this general capacity that continues to garner a considerable amount of interest. The purpose of this article is to elucidate current knowledge and identify a number of unresolved issues regarding this specific mental ability. In particular, this article focuses on recent research findings from neuroimaging, neuropsychology, and clinical psychology that have demonstrated a close relation between episodic future thought and the ability to remember personal episodes from one's past. On the other hand, considerations of the role of abstracted (semantic) representations in episodic future thought have been noticeably absent in the literature. The final section of this article proposes that both episodic and semantic memory play an important role in the construction of episodic future thoughts and that their interaction in this process may be determined by the relative accessibility of information in memory.The Author(s) 2010.

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether a misattribution of specific characteristics or a misattribution of global familiarity underlies false memories as assessed through imagination inflation. Using the paradigm developed by Goff and Roediger (1998), we found that the proportion of false memories increased with repeated imagination, replicating the imagination inflation effect. False memories developed through imagination were greatest in conditions that forced participants to include sensory detail in their imaginings. Finally, conscious recollection more often accompanied false memories in perceptually detailed imagination conditions, whereas feelings of familiarity more often accompanied false memories in conditions that lacked sensory cues. These results suggest that imagination that contains more perceptual information leads to more elaborate memory representations containing specific characteristics that can be confused with actually performed actions. Confusion based on these representations, as opposed to confusion based on processing fluency, is more likely to lead to false memories.

The present study explored memory for familiar or usual actions (e.g., flip the coin) and bizarre or unusual actions (e.g., sit on the dice). In Session l, action statements were presented to 210 participants, who had to either perform or imagine those actions. In Session 2, 24 h later, participants imagined performing various actions, some presented in the first session and others totally new. Finally, in Session 3, 2 weeks later, participants were tested on their memory for the original actions. We found that as the number of imaginings increased in Session 2, so did the proportion of did responses to actions that were only imagined or not even presented. This pattern was present for both bizarre and familiar actions. These results demonstrate that bizarre actions may lose the item distinctiveness that is used to make accurate memory decisions after repeated imagination.

Abstract Three experiments have demonstrated that age-related increases in both probability and speed of false recognitions for word lists depended on the use of a gist-based memory strategy. When test conditions promoted a gist strategy, both younger and older participants were as likely to falsely recognize a thematically associated lure as to correctly recognize a studied item, and both groups were equally fast in making these decisions. However, when test conditions deemphasized a gist-based strategy, older adults were more likely than younger adults, and faster, to falsely recognize both strong and weakly associated lures. These findings suggest an age-related increase in reliance on gist-based processing that may underlie age differences in false memory.

Briefly imagining, paraphrasing, or explaining an event causes people to increase their confidence that this event occurred during childhood he imagination inflation effect. The mechanisms responsible for the effect were investigated with a new paradigm. In Experiment 1, event familiarity (defined as processing fluency) was varied by asking participants to rate each event once, three times, or five times. No inflation was found, indicating that familiarity does not account for the effect. In Experiment 2, richness of memory representation was manipulated by asking participants to generate zero, three, or six details. Confidence increased from the initial to the final rating in the three- and six-detail conditions, indicating that the effect is based on reality-monitoring errors. However, greater inflation in the three-detail condition than in the six-detail condition indicated that there is a boundary condition. These results were also consistent with an alternative hypothesis, the mental workload hypothesis.

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 experimenterprovided warnings or slow presentation rates to reduce false memories.

Adopting the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm,we investigated the mechanism of false recognition in a 2(forewarning) ×2(presentation time) ×2(time pressure during recognition)×3 (types of items) factorial design.ANOVA showed a significant main effect of forewarning,and interaction between item type and time pressure.With the signal detection theory(SDT),further analysis showed that the participants had poorer discrimination under time pressure,which indicated that they did not have enough time to make judgments.The SDT analysis also showed that participants used more strict response criteria when giving them forewarning.In-depth discussion was made in terms of the activation/monitoring theory.