Effects of Age and Self-Performance on Memory for Who Did What

Alan W Kersten, Julie L Earles and Jennifer Walsh Brymer

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2022, vol. 77, issue 3, 472-481

Abstract: ObjectivesThis research tested whether performing an action themselves leads young and older adults to false memory for having seen that action performed by another person. It also tested whether observing another person perform an action leads to false memory for self-performance of that action.MethodHealthy young and older adults viewed videos involving actors performing different actions. After viewing some of the actions, participants were instructed to perform those same actions themselves. Participants were tested 1 week later on their memory for the actions of the actors in the videos and for their own actions.ResultsOlder adults were more likely to believe that the actor in a test item had performed the same action previously when they had performed that same action themselves, both when the actor had indeed performed that action and when the actor had not. This effect of self-performance on memory for other people’s actions was significantly smaller in young adults. Young adults performed better than older adults at remembering which actors had performed which actions in the videos, although participants had greater difficulty remembering who did what for actions that they had also performed themselves. The 2 groups were equally likely to falsely remember having performed an action that had only appeared in the videos, but young adults were better able than older adults to correctly identify the actions that they had in fact performed.DiscussionOlder adults have greater difficulty than young adults at distinguishing self-performed actions from actions performed by other people.

Keywords: Mirror neurons; Observation inflation; Source memory; Subject-performed task (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbab118 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:geronb:v:77:y:2022:i:3:p:472-481.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

More articles in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B from The Gerontological Society of America Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().