title: Affective false memories in Dementia of Alzheimer's Type.
abstract: This study examined the production of inferential false memories for complex pictorial stimuli and the implications of affective content in Alzheimer's disease (AD). A group of 24 AD patients and a group of 24 healthy older adults studied a sequence of pictures depicting stories that included positive, negative or neutral consequences of an unseen action, and then completed an old-new picture recognition test. The number of causal errors was higher in healthy older adults compared to AD patients but affective content attenuated the effect. Causal errors increased in AD patients when stories included affective (positive or negative) outcomes. In addition, negative content produced a larger number of errors than positive content across groups. This data confirms that although memory processing is poorer in AD, it is sensitive to affective content. Accordingly, the nature of affective false memory errors suggest the need to consider the use of affective information in the development of new cognitive training procedures.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Chieti, Chieti, Italy. Electronic address: bfairfield@unich.it.
authors.forename: Beth
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Fairfield
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Chieti, Chieti, Italy.
authors.forename: Mirco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Colangelo
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Chieti, Chieti, Italy.
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Mammarella
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Chieti, Chieti, Italy.
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Di Domenico
authors.affiliation: Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
authors.forename: Cesare
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cornoldi
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D003704:Dementia / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012094:Repression, Psychology
keywords: Affective content; Aging; Alzheimer's disease; False memories