A boon and a bane: Comparing the effects of prior knowledge on memory across the lifespan

Developmental Psychology
Garvin Brod, Yee Lee Shing

Abstract

We tested 6- to 7-year-olds, 18- to 22-year-olds, and 67- to 74-year-olds on an associative memory task that consisted of knowledge-congruent and knowledge-incongruent object-scene pairs that were highly familiar to all age groups. We compared the 3 age groups on their memory congruency effect (i.e., better memory for knowledge-congruent associations) and on a schema bias score, which measures participants' tendency to commit knowledge-congruent memory errors. We found that prior knowledge similarly benefited memory for items encoded in a congruent context in all age groups. However, for associative memory, older adults and, to a lesser extent, children overrelied on their prior knowledge, as indicated by an enhanced congruency effect and schema bias. Functional MRI (fMRI) performed during memory encoding revealed an age-independent Memory × Congruency interaction in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Furthermore, the magnitude of vmPFC recruitment correlated positively with the schema bias. These findings suggest that older adults are most prone to rely on their prior knowledge for episodic memory decisions, but that children can also rely heavily on prior knowledge that they are well acquainted with. Furthermore, the...Continue Reading

Citations

Jul 14, 2020·NPJ Science of Learning·Marlieke Tina Renée van Kesteren, Martijn Meeter
Feb 14, 2021·NPJ Science of Learning·Marlieke Tina Renée van Kesteren, Martijn Meeter
Aug 21, 2021·NPJ Science of Learning·Garvin Brod
Oct 13, 2021·Human Brain Mapping·Nils C J MüllerGuillén Fernández

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