The role of cognitive operations in reality monitoring: a study with healthy older adults and Alzheimer's-type dementia.
The authors examined the role of cognitive operations in discriminations between externally and internally generated events (e.g., reality monitoring) in healthy and pathological aging. The authors used 2 reality-monitoring distinctions to manipulate the quantity and quality of necessary cognitive operations: discriminating between I performed versus I imagined performing and between I watched another perform versus I imagined another performing. Older adults had more difficulty than did younger adults when discriminating between memories in both versions of the task. In addition, older adults with Alzheimer's-type dementia showed marked difficulties when attributing a source to imagined actions. The authors interpret these findings in terms of an age difficulty or the failure to use cognitive operations as useful cues during source monitoring.
Fairfield
Beth
B
Department of Psychology, University of Chieti-G. d'Annunzio, Italy. bfairfield@inwind.it
Mammarella
Nicola
N
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D001364:Awareness; D003469:Culture; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011594:Psychometrics; D011936:Reality Testing; D012016:Reference Values; D055815:Young Adult