Fabienne Colombel

False memories and normal aging: Links between inhibitory capacities and monitoring processes.

Empirical evidence suggests an increased production of false memories with advancing age. The activation-monitoring theory proposes that strategic monitoring processes influence the probability of false recall in the DRM paradigm. In the present study, we examined the hypothesis that a low level of inhibition may impair the efficient use of monitoring processes during information retrieval and thus increase the production of false memories in aging. Accordingly, we conducted a study in which older adults with low or high levels of inhibition performed a standard DRM task or an inclusion DRM task that disables monitoring processes. The results indicated that low inhibitory capacities were associated with fewer correct recalls and increased production of critical lures (false memories), suggesting difficulties in using monitoring processes at the time of retrieval. Our findings also showed that the relationship between Age and the production of critical lures in a standard DRM task is mediated by Inhibition. These results are interpreted as suggesting that inhibitory abilities may partly be linked to the impairment of monitoring processes in the elderly. (PsycINFO Database Record

Intact Semantic Priming of Critical Lures in Alzheimer’s Disease: Implications for False Memory

OBJECTIVES The present study examines the question of the activation of the critical lure (CL) in Alzheimers patients with a Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM)-like task. More precisely, older adults and Alzheimers patients performed a lexical decision task in which they were asked to categorize strings of letters as words or nonwords. Contrary to the DRM paradigm in which the activation of the CL is inferred from its production at recall, such a lexical decision task does not require the joint use of intentional recovery strategies and source-monitoring processes that are known to be particularly impaired in Alzheimers patients. The performance at the lexical decision therefore reflects the activation of the CL without contamination from such strategic processes. METHOD Twenty-nine older adults and 25 Alzheimers patients performed a lexical decision task with DRM lists intermixed with neutral words and nonwords. RESULTS Analysis indicated that older adults as well as Alzheimers patients showed shorter lexical decision latencies for CLs than for other types of words. DISCUSSION Contrary to the existing literature, our results suggest that the activation of the CL is preserved in Alzheimers patients at mild to moderate stages of the disease.

False Memories in Alzheimer’s Disease: Intact Semantic Priming But Impaired Production of Critical Lures

Objectives This study explores the activation of the critical lure (CL) and its production in Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) tasks in Alzheimers disease and aging. In a previous lexical decision task including DRM lists, we showed that the activation of the CL occurs normally in Alzheimers patients. Here, we reproduce this study and add a production (DRM) task in order to compare both processes in the same groups of participants. Method Eighteen older adults and 20 Alzheimers patients performed a conventional DRM task, followed by a lexical decision task with DRM lists intermixed with neutral words and nonwords. Results Analyses indicated that Alzheimers patients produced significantly fewer CLs than older participants in the DRM task, but that they showed, like older adults, shorter lexical decision latencies for CLs than for other types of words. Discussion This study provides evidence that the low production of CLs regularly documented in Alzheimers patients in the DRM paradigm is not necessarily explained by their nonactivation. The results are discussed in the light of the hypothesis of a rapid disappearance of the episodic mnemonic trace of the CLs in Alzheimers patients.

Attentional Patterns Involved in Coping Strategies in a Sport Context.

We investigated the relationship between coping strategies and attentional bias after a sport competition. We administered the Ways of Coping Checklist (Paulhan, Nuissier, Quintard, Cousson, & Bourgeois, 1994) to 145 athletes immediately after they had participated in a sport competition. We also assessed attentional bias using a dot probe detection task. Results revealed that emotion-focused coping strategies led athletes to orient their attention away from threat, whereas athletes who adopted problem-focused coping strategies focused their attention toward threat. More precisely, problem-focused coping strategies are related to a facilitated detection of threat, not to disengagement difficulties. The vigilance attentional bias seems to be a compensatory strategy to cope with a stressful situation, such as sport competition.

Now you make false memories; now you do not: the order of presentation of words in DRM lists influences the production of the critical lure in Alzheimer’s disease

Why do some Alzheimer’s patients produce fewer false memories than healthy older participants in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm, which was especially designed for the study of false memories in a laboratory setting? Using a very simple methodology, this study examines a new explanatory factor inherent in the paradigm itself: the order of presentation of the words in the lists. A sample comprising 149 participants (36 younger, 40 middle-aged, 37 healthy older adults, and 36 Alzheimer’s patients) performed a DRM task with either a classic descending forward associative strength (FAS) presentation order of the words or an ascending FAS presentation order. The results showed that this simple manipulation influenced the production of false memories in Alzheimer’s patients only. Contrary to the other participants, Alzheimer’s patients produced significantly more critical lures in the ascending FAS condition than in the descending FAS condition. These new data, interpreted in the light of serial position effects, invite a reconsideration of the relevance of the DRM paradigm for comparing the production of false memories in Alzheimer’s patients and healthy older participants.

Variations d'encodage et faux souvenirs en rappel.

This article presents two experiments using the DRM paradigm and examining the effects of variations in the depth of processing on the occurrence of false memories at recall. Contrary to what is generally observed, the results of the first experiment indicate that deep processing, maximizing the possibility of implication of distinctive characteristics, leads to an increase of the recall of hits without increasing the recall of lures. The second experiment uses instructions of inclusion requiring participants to recall not only the presented items but also all the words that were activated in memory both during the encoding and retrieval phases. These instructions, which deactivate the strategy of control of the source, support the notion that deep processing favours the activation of distinctive characteristics that facilitate the process of discrimination during the identification of the source.