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Abstract

Objectives
The current study set out to investigate whether false memories for pictures exhibit priming effects in older adult controls (OACs) and people with early onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We conducted two studies to examine whether false memories for pictures had a priming effect on a perceptual closure task.

Method
In Experiment 1 older adult controls (OACs) and people with early onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD) were presented with pictorial versions of the Deese/Rodiger-McDermott (DRM) lists and took part in a recognition task. This followed with a perceptual closure task (PCT), where both groups were shown degraded pictures that became clearer overtime and participants had to identify the picture as quickly as possible. In Experiment 2 we manipulated the modality – verbal vs pictorial in both the study phase and PCT phase.

Results
Experiment 1 results indicated false memories for pictures did not serve as effective primes in the PCT. Experiment 2 results revealed, pictorial false memories primed the PCT significantly slower than pictorial true memories in the visual PCT task, but the reverse finding was shown for the verbal PCT task. Finally, verbal false memories primed the verbal PCT reliably faster than true memories.

Conclusions
Our findings show when solving pictorial problems, for both older adults and people with AD false memories may not activate the appropriate representation in memory for solving a pictorial problems whereas actually presented items do.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	©American Psychological Association, 2023 This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. The final article is available, upon publication, at: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/neu/index
Publisher Keywords:	Alzheimer’s disease, DRM paradigm, false memory, Perceptual closure Task Priming Perceptual Closure Problems
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Departments:	School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Psychology
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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