title: "It's a hair-dryer…No, it's a drill": misidentification-related false recognitions in younger and older adults.
abstract: Memory for visual objects, although typically highly accurate, can be distorted, especially in older adults. Here we asked whether also erroneous identifications of visual objects subsequently corrected and replaced by a correct identification might induce false recognitions, and whether this is more likely to occur in older people. For this aim a new paradigm was developed. In the first phase, participants performed a visual object identification task with degraded pictures of objects and produced correct and false but subsequently corrected identifications. In the second phase, participants performed a surprise recognition task in which also false identifications were presented. False identifications elicited false recognitions, with a stronger and more reliable effect in elderly participants, suggesting that correcting the initial visual error is not sufficient to correct the memory for the experience. Moreover, misidentification-related false recognitions coexisted in memory along with correct recognitions of correct identifications. These findings are discussed in relation with age-related deficits in memory updating and strategic retrieval.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Via S. Salvi 12, Padiglione 26, 50125 Firenze, Italy. manila.vannucci@psico.unifi.it
authors.forename: Manila
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vannucci
authors.forename: Giuliana
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mazzoni
authors.forename: Igor
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Marchetti
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Lavezzini
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult