Are older adults less efficient in making attributions about the origin of memories for web interaction?

Abstract Introduction As people age, they may be less likely to recollect where or when an event took place. However, few studies of source monitoring and aging have used tasks that are similar to what people do in everyday life. Objective Potential age-related differences in making attributions abo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Revue européenne de psychologie appliquée 2012-04, Vol.62 (2), p.93-102
Main Authors: Etcheverry, I, Terrier, P, Marquié, J.-C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age
Aging
Cognitive ability
Cognitive aging
Cognitive science
Computer Science
Executive function
Information Retrieval
Information search
Internal Medicine
Internet
Memory
Mémoire de la source
Psychiatry
Psychology
Recherche d’information
Recollection
Reviews
Source memory
Vieillissement cognitif
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Abstract Introduction As people age, they may be less likely to recollect where or when an event took place. However, few studies of source monitoring and aging have used tasks that are similar to what people do in everyday life. Objective Potential age-related differences in making attributions about the origin of remembered events in Web interaction are examined in the present study. Methods A Web-based source-monitoring paradigm was modelled to assess both item and source memory, which incorporated typical Web search tasks. Results Older adults exhibited a reduced ability in navigation-oriented search, where both a measure of processing speed and a measure of executive function were significant predictors of performance. They were less able to recognize and recollect items previously encountered in web pages. However, source memory was not more impaired with age than item memory. Interestingly, although the addition of cognitive operations as a cue to source had no impact on source memory, it resulted in increased recognition and recollection in the older adults. Conclusion More generally, recognition and recollection appeared to be dissociated from source memory as a function of different individual difference measures.
ISSN:1162-9088
1878-3457
DOI:10.1016/j.erap.2010.11.002