title: Age differences in the vulnerability of facial recognition memory to proactive interference.
abstract: A facial recognition memory task was administered to 16 young subjects (age range 18-30) and 28 elderly subjects (age range 63-83). A continuous recognition paradigm was used, in which subjects were instructed to identify the repeated faces in an ongoing series of faces presented on a video monitor screen. A signal detection analysis of the data revealed a mild recognition memory deficit in the elderly, due mainly to an increase in false positives during the second half of the test session. This age-specific increase in late-session false alarms may be a result of increased sensitivity of the aged subjects to proactive interference from previously presented faces. Increasing the length of the delay between the initial and repeat presentation of a face decreased recognition accuracy in both groups, but the young subjects were more sensitive to the delay interval effect than the elderly. Multiple presentations of faces produced a comparable improvement in the recognition accuracy of both young and old subjects. The elderly subjects exhibited a more liberal response bias than the young subjects, indicating that impaired memory task performance of the aged subjects cannot be attributed to a more conservative test-taking strategy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, New York University Medical Center, NY 10016.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Flicker
authors.forename: S H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Ferris
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Crook
authors.forename: R T
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Bartus
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005145:Face; D005556:Form Perception; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual