ABSTRACT
The laboratory study of false memory, while not a new area of investigation, has received particular attention over the last 10 years with the réintroduction of Deeses’s (1959) converging associates list-learning paradigm by Roediger and McDermott (1995). In this particular paradigm (known as the Deese-Roediger-McDermott or DRM paradigm), false recall and recognition of nonpresented critical target words that are semantically related to a previously presented list of words occurs with relatively high frequency. Roediger and McDermott have reported false alarm rates of 84% for related lures, a number comparable to the hit rate (86%) for studied items; the false alarm rate for unrelated items is significantly lower at only 2%. Similar types of false recall and false recognition have been observed in a variety of paradigms employing a wide variety of materials, including categorized word lists (e.g., Smith, Ward, Tindell, Sifonis, & Wilkenfeld, 2000), sentences (e.g., Bransford & Franks, 1971), text passages (Bower, Black, & Turner, 1979), and pictures (e.g., Israel & Schacter, 1997). The common thread across all of these studies is the claim by participants that a novel word, object, or event is familiar and, therefore, has been presented earlier. This phenomenon has been noted in a wide range of individuals, including children (e.g., Ghetti, Qin, & Goodman, 2002), neurologically damaged individuals (e.g., Schacter, Curran, Galiuccio, Milberg, & Bates, 1996), amnesics (e.g., Schacter, Verfaellie, Anes, & Racine, 1998), and older adults (e.g., Tun, Wingfield, Rosen, & Blanchard, 1998). This chapter focuses on this last group of individuals, drawing connections between false memory susceptibility and eyewitness memory in older adults. To preview our conclusions based on this review, both the false memory literature and the eyewitness memory literature by and large point to an increased susceptibility in older adults relative to young adults to making memory errors, particularly in the recollection of event details. This is a disconcerting conclusion for anyone interested in the accuracy of elderly eyewitnesses, as it suggests that their testimony is more likely to be inaccurate than a younger adult’s testimony would be. With U.S. Census Bureau projections (2004) estimating that 19.6% of our population will be over age 65 by the year 2030, it is very likely that this age group will find itself in contact with the legal system, either as victims of or witnesses to crime. It is important, then, to understand the conditions under which older adults’ memory for events is compromised. As our review points out, although the weight of the empirical evidence indicates that older adults possess less accurate memories, there are some situations in which older adults are no more susceptible to memory errors than are younger adults, so a clear understanding of the limits of memory accuracy in older adults is necessary before concluding that in all cases they are poor eyewitnesses.
