Nicole M. Rosa

Source memory for action in young and older adults: self vs. close or unknown others.

The present study examines source memory for actions (e.g., placing items in a suitcase). For both young and older adult participants, source memory for actions performed by the self was better than memory for actions performed by either a known (close) or unknown other. In addition, neither young nor older adults were more likely to confuse self with close others than with unknown others. Results suggest an advantage in source memory for actions performed by the self compared to others, possibly associated with sensorimotor cues that are relatively preserved in aging.

False Memory in Aging Resulting From Self-Referential Processing

OBJECTIVES Referencing the self is known to enhance accurate memory, but less is known about how the strategy affects false memory, particularly for highly self-relevant information. Because older adults are more prone to false memories, we tested whether self-referencing increased false memories with age. METHOD In 2 studies, older and younger adults rated adjectives for self-descriptiveness and later completed a surprise recognition test comprised of words rated previously for self-descriptiveness and novel lure words. Lure words were subsequently rated for self-descriptiveness in order to assess the impact of self-relevance on false memory. Study 2 introduced commonness judgments as a control condition, such that participants completed a recognition test on adjectives rated for commonness in addition to adjectives in the self-descriptiveness condition. RESULTS Across both studies, findings indicate an increased response bias to self-referencing that increased hit rates for both older and younger adults but also increased false alarms as information became more self-descriptive, particularly for older adults. DISCUSSION Although the present study supports previous literature showing a boost in memory for self-referenced information, the increase in false alarms, especially in older adults, highlights the potential for memory errors, particularly for information that is strongly related to the self.

Source Memory for Self and Other in Patients With Mild Cognitive Impairment due to Alzheimer’s Disease

OBJECTIVES The present study examined the role of enactment in source memory in a cognitively impaired population. As seen in healthy older adults, it was predicted that source memory in people with mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimers disease (MCI-AD) would benefit from the self-reference aspect of enactment. METHOD Seventeen participants with MCI-AD and 18 controls worked in small groups to pack a picnic basket and suitcase and were later tested for their source memory for each item. RESULTS For item memory, self-referencing improved corrected recognition scores for both MCI-AD and control participants. The MCI-AD group did not demonstrate the same benefit as controls in correct source memory for self-related items. However, those with MCI-AD were relatively less likely to misattribute new items to the self and more likely to misattribute new items to others when committing errors, compared with controls. DISCUSSION The enactment effect and self-referencing did not enhance accurate source memory more than other referencing for patients with MCI-AD. However, people with MCI-AD benefited in item memory and source memory, being less likely to falsely claim new items as their own, indicating some self-reference benefit occurs for people with MCI-AD.

Age differences in self-referencing: Evidence for common and distinct encoding strategies

Although engagement of medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) underlies self-referencing of information for younger and older adults, the region has not consistently been implicated across age groups for the encoding of self-referenced information. We sought to determine whether making judgments about others as well as the self influenced findings in the previous study. During an fMRI session, younger and older adults encoded adjectives using only a self-reference task. For items later remembered compared to those later forgotten, both age groups robustly recruited medial prefrontal cortex, indicating common neural regions support encoding across younger and older adults when participants make only self-reference judgments. Focal age differences emerged in regions related to emotional processing and cognitive control, though these differences are more limited than in tasks in which judgments also are made about others. We conclude that making judgments about another person differently affects the ways that younger and older adults make judgments about the self, with results of a follow-up behavioral study supporting this interpretation. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Memory and Aging.

A memory advantage for property.

Peoples access to resources depends on their status as the owner of particular items. To respect property, people need to remember who owns which objects. We test the hypothesis that people possess enhanced memory for ownership relations compared to unrelated objects. Participants viewed a sequence of 10 person-object pairs before completing a surprise associative memory test in which they matched each person with the previously paired object. We varied the description of the person-object pairs in the instructions. Across three experiments, participants showed better recall when the person was described as the owner of the object compared to being unrelated. Furthermore, memory for property was better than a physical relation (bumping), whereas it did not differ from mental relations (wanting and thinking). These patterns were observed both for memory of items (Experiments 1 and 2) and perceptual details (Experiment 3). We discuss implications for how people remember other peoples property.

Teaching About Disability in Psychology An Analysis of Disability Curricula in U.S. Undergraduate Psychology Programs

Historically, psychology education about disability focused narrowly on psychiatric and cognitive disabilities. Furthermore, disability tends to be viewed from the medical model, rather than the social model endorsed by disability scholars, which describes disability as primarily socially constructed. Course offerings for the psychology departments of 98 top-ranked undergraduate programs in the United States were content analyzed to identify the types of disabilities discussed and the extent to which they utilized a medical or social model. Courses examining psychiatric disabilities were offered at all departments. However, categories such as physical, sensory, and intellectual disabilities were covered in fewer than 20% of departments. Course descriptions contained significantly more medical than social model content. Results suggest many types of disabilities are underrepresented in psychology programs and the medical model continues to prevail.

Born that way or became that way: Stigma toward congenital versus acquired disability:

Stigma may differ depending on the timing of group-membership entry, whether a person was “born that way” or “became that way.” Disability, a highly understudied minority group, varies on this domain. Three studies demonstrated that congenital disability is more stigmatized than acquired disability and essentialism and blame moderate and mediate this effect. Congenital disability was more stigmatized than the acquired version of the same disability (Studies 1–2). People with congenital disability were more essentialized, but less blamed than people with acquired disability (Study 2). Manipulating onset and essentialism revealed that when disability was acquired, low essentialism predicted greater stigma through blame (Study 3). However, when disability was congenital, essentialism did not affect stigma through blame. For stigmatized groups unlikely to be blamed for their group membership, reducing essentialism could ameliorate stigma, but for groups that might be blamed for their group membership, increasing essentialism may be a tool to reduce stigma by reducing blame.

Ageing and the group-reference effect in memory.

The present study examines age differences in the memory benefits from group-referncing. While prior work establishes that the memory performance of younger and older adults similarly benefits from relating information to the self, this study assessed whether those benefits extend to referencing a meaningful group membership. Young and older adult participants encoded trait words by judging whether each word describes themselves, describes their group membership (selected for each age group), or is familiar. After a retention interval, participants completed a surprise recognition memory test. The results indicate that group-referencing increased recognition memory performance compared to the familiarity judgements for both young and older groups. However, the group-reference benefit is limited, emerging as smaller than the benefit from self-referencing. These results challenge previous findings of equivalent benefits for group-referencing and self-referencing, suggesting that such effects may not prevail under all conditions, including for older adults. The findings also highlight the need to examine the mechanisms of group-referencing that can lead to variability in the group-reference effect.