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.

Affective false memories in Dementia of Alzheimer's Type

FAIRFIELD, Beth
Primo
;
COLANGELO, MIRCO
Secondo
;
MAMMARELLA, Nicola;DI DOMENICO, ALBERTO
Penultimo
;
CORNOLDI, CESARE
Ultimo
2017-01-01

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.
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
1-s2.0-S0165178116302360-main.pdf

Solo gestori archivio

Descrizione: Article
Tipologia: PDF editoriale
Dimensione 555.3 kB
Formato Adobe PDF
555.3 kB Adobe PDF   Visualizza/Apri   Richiedi una copia

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11564/674418
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? 2
  • Scopus 8
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? 7
social impact