Deceiving the elderly: Effects of accessibility bias in cued-recall performance

Two experiments examined age-related differences in a misinformation paradigm. Young and elderly participants studied a list of related word pairs (e.g. bed sheet) and were then given a cued-recall test ("bed s_ee_" presented as cues for recall of "sheet"). A "prime" stimulus was presented briefly before each test trial. On congruent trials the prime was the target word from study (sheet) whereas on incongruent trials the prime was a related word that was a plausible response but not the target (sleep). On baseline trials, the prime was a string of ampersands. When forced to respond (Expt. 1), both young and elderly participants demonstrated a bias to respond with the prime word, although the elderly showed a larger false memory effect as measured by higher false recalls on incongruent relative to baseline trials. When given the option to pass (Expt. 2), elderly participants continued to exhibit a large bias toward the prime word whereas young participants tended to pass when they were unable to recall the target. Results are interpreted in terms of an accessibility bias, which influences guessing and is a basis of responding independent of recollection. Discussion focuses on the importance of studying age-related changes in bias and recollection along with neural correlates of these changes.