title: Daily-life contact affects the own-age bias and neural correlates of face memory in elderly participants.
abstract: Previous studies revealed consistently enhanced recognition memory for same- as compared to other-age faces (own-age bias, OAB) in young adults, but inconsistent results in elderly participants. To resolve these discrepancies, we examined recognition memory and event-related potentials (ERPs) for young and old faces in young participants and two elderly groups, who either reported high or low degrees of daily contact with elderly relative to younger persons. As expected, young adults showed more accurate memory for young versus old faces. While no OAB was found in old/low contact participants, old/high contact participants were more accurate with old versus young faces. ERPs in young adults revealed a parietal old/new effect from 500 to 800 ms (hits>correct rejections) for young but not old faces. Whereas no old/new effect was seen in the old/low contact group, the old/high contact participants exhibited a prominent reversed old/new effect (hits<correct rejections) for old faces. These results suggest that contact may account for earlier discrepant results with regard to the OAB in elderly participants. A behavioral OAB in elderly participants may depend on high degrees of contact towards old people. The finding of ERP old/new effects specific to own-age faces suggests enhanced recollection of study phase detail in young participants, whereas it may reflect increased engagement in processes aiming at compensating for a deficit in recollection in elderly participants.
authors.affiliation: DFG Research Unit Person Perception, Department of General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Am Steiger 3/1, 07743 Jena, Germany. holger.wiese@uni-jena.de
authors.forename: Holger
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wiese
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Komes
authors.forename: Stefan R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Schweinberger
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living / Q000523:psychology*; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001364:Awareness; D015982:Bias; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult