Aging, source memory, and the experience of "remembering"

Kuhlmann, Beatrice G. ; Boywitt, C. Dennis

DOI:	https://doi.org/10.1080/13825585.2015.1120270
URL:	http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/138255...
Additional URL:	http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26653292
Document Type:	Article
Year of publication:	2016
The title of a journal, publication series:	Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition
Volume:	23
Issue number:	4
Page range:	477-498
Place of publication:	London
Publishing house:	Psychology Press, Taylor & Francis Group
ISSN:	1382-5585 , 1744-4128
Publication language:	English
Institution:	School of Social Sciences > Kognitive Psychologie mit Schwerp. Kognitives Altern (Kuhlmann 2015-)
Subject:	150 Psychology
Keywords (English):	cognitive aging, source memory, binding, remember/know, recollection
Abstract:	In a previous study, we found source memory for perceptual features to differentiate between younger but not older adults’ reports of recollective (“remember”; R) and “know” (K) experiences. In two experiments with younger (17–30 years) and older (64–81 years) participants, we examined whether memory for meaningful speaker sources would accompany older adults’ recollective experience. Indeed, memory for male and female speakers (but not partial memory for gender; Experiment 1) as well as bound memory for speakers and their facial expressions (Experiment 2) distinguished between both younger and older adults’ RK reports. Thus, memory for some sources forms a common basis for younger and older adults’ retrieval experience. Nonetheless, older adults still showed lower objective source memory and lower subjective source-attribution confidence than younger adults when reporting recollective experiences, suggesting that source memory is less relevant to their retrieval experience than for younger adults.