What do people really think of when they claim to believe in repressed memory? Methodological middle ground and applied issues.

What do people really think of when they say they believe in repressed traumatic memory? In two studies (NStudy 1 = 3158; NStudy 2 = 305) using an integrative method taking into account recent methodological discussions, we found that, in total, 2458 participants (71% of the two combined samples) reported that they believed in repressed memory. In Study 1, based on separate questions on the whole group, we found 71% of agreement with the concept of repression, 74% with the concept of unconscious repression, and 54% with the concept of deliberate memory suppression. Participants with no memory of childhood abuse endorsed unconscious and deliberate mechanisms less than those with such memories. In Study 2, the order in which the items were presented was not associated with the beliefs in the different statements. Overall, our results show that people see repression as an unconscious mechanism. We suggest the use of within-subject designs and/or follow-up questions to determine how people understand the concept of repression. Such adherence to this controversial concept can have adverse implications in the clinical and legal arenas.

DRM Paradigm: Evidence that Alzheimer's Patients Think of the Critical Lure as Often as Healthy Older Participants.

BACKGROUND: Up to now, in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, the lower production of false memories in Alzheimer's disease has been explained in terms of non-activation of the critical lure. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to examine the critical lure activation process from items of DRM lists in Alzheimer's patients, using a free association task. METHOD: Twenty-six young adults, 25 older adults, and 17 Alzheimer's patients performed a free association task with DRM words. RESULTS: Analyses indicated that Alzheimer's patients produced as many critical lures in the free association task as healthy older participants, but significantly fewer than younger participants. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that the low production of critical lures in DRM tasks usually reported in Alzheimer's patients might not be due to a semantic deficit that prevents the activation of the critical lure.

False Memory in Alzheimer's Disease.

Patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) not only are suffering from amnesia but also are prone to memory distortions, such as experiencing detailed and vivid recollections of episodic events that have never been encountered (i.e., false memories). To describe and explain these distortions, we offer a review to synthesize current knowledge on false memory in AD into a framework allowing for better understanding of the taxonomy and phenomenology of false memories and of the cognitive mechanisms that may underlie false memory formation in AD. According to this review, certain phenomenological characteristics of memories (e.g., high emotional load, high vividness, or high familiarity) result in misattributions in AD. More specifically, this review proposes that generalized decline in cognitive control and inhibition in AD may result in difficulties in suppressing irrelevant information during memory monitoring, especially when irrelevant (i.e., false) information is characterized by high emotion, vividness, or familiarity. This review also proposes that binding deficits in AD decrease the ability to retrieve relevant contextual details, leading to source monitoring errors and false memories. In short, this review depicts how phenomenological characteristics of memories and failures of monitoring during retrieval contribute to the occurrence of false memory in AD.

The Moderating Role of Education on the Relationship Between Perceived Stereotype Threat and False Memory in Aging.

Studies regularly show that an age-based stereotype threat impairs older adults' performance on memory tasks. Results regarding stereotype threat effects on false memories are less clear. Some studies suggest that education may moderate the relationship between an age-related stereotype threat and episodic memory performance in older adults. The present study aimed at examining the moderating role of education on the relationship between perceived stereotype threat (PST) and false memories in older adults. With this aim, 82 adults between 60 and 70 years of age performed a Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) task followed by a free recall test and completed questionnaires assessing both their perception of an age-based stereotype threat and their education level. Regression analyses showed no effect of PST on the production of critical lures. However, as was expected, our results showed that in higher educated older adults, as the perception of stereotype increases, the production of critical lures increases. These results confirm the moderating role of education and highlight its key role in the relationship between the age-based stereotype threat and older adults' susceptibility to false memories.

Misinformation Effect in Aging: A New Light with Equivalence Testing.

OBJECTIVES: To better characterize the formation of false memories in older adults, we conducted a study using a French adaptation of the misinformation paradigm from Loftus, Levidow, and Duensing (1992). We aimed to show higher false memory production in older than in younger adults. METHOD: One hundred and four younger adults (18-30 years) and 104 older adults (70-95 years) took part in the study. Participants were presented with a misinformation paradigm through the viewing of a short video followed by a questionnaire containing misinformation about the film. After a short delay (45 min), they performed a recognition task. RESULTS: Contrary to our hypothesis, the results analyzed with a Welch t test did not reveal a greater misinformation effect in older adults than in younger adults. Results were reanalyzed using the equivalence test which indicated that younger and older adults are statistically equivalent and not statistically different. DISCUSSION: The equivalence test helped to clarify the contradictory results of the literature. Furthermore, such results show the interest to reconsider misinformation effect in aging.

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.

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 Alzheimer's disease and aging. In a previous lexical decision task including DRM lists, we showed that the activation of the CL occurs normally in Alzheimer's 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 Alzheimer's 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 Alzheimer's 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 Alzheimer's 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 Alzheimer's patients.

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 Alzheimer's patients with a Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM)-like task. More precisely, older adults and Alzheimer's 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 Alzheimer's 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 Alzheimer's patients performed a lexical decision task with DRM lists intermixed with neutral words and nonwords. RESULTS: Analysis indicated that older adults as well as Alzheimer's 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 Alzheimer's patients at mild to moderate stages of the disease.

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.