Psychology and Aging © 2010 American Psychological Association 2010, Vol. ●●, No. ●, 000–000 0882-7974/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0020816 Effects of Repetition on Associative Recognition in Young and Older Adults: Item and Associative Strengthening Norbou G. Buchler Paige Faunce Carnegie Mellon University, Carnegie Mellon University and Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD Leah L. Light and Nisha Gottfredson Lynne M. Reder Pitzer College Carnegie Mellon University Young and older adults studied word pairs and later discriminated studied pairs from various types of foils including recombined word-pairs and foil pairs containing one or two previously unstudied words. We manipulated how many times a specific word pair was repeated (1 or 5) and how many different words were associated with a given word (1 or 5) to tease apart the effects of item familiarity from recollection of the association. Rather than making simple old/new judgments, subjects chose one of five responses: (a) Old-Old (original), (b) Old-Old (rearranged), (c) Old-New, (d) New-Old, (e) New-New. Veridical recollection was impaired in old age in all memory conditions. There was evidence for a higher rate of false recollection of rearranged pairs following exact repetition of study pairs in older but not younger adults. In contrast, older adults were not more susceptible to interference than young adults when one or both words of the pair had multiple competing associates. Older adults were just as able as young adults to use item familiarity to recognize which word of a foil was old. This pattern suggests that recollection problems in advanced age are because of a deficit in older adults’ formation or retrieval of new associations in memory. A modeling simulation provided good fits to these data and offers a mechanistic explanation based on an age-related reduction of working memory. Keywords: aging, associative recognition, recollection, familiarity, resource model Dual-process theories of memory propose that two processes item strength. An emerging consensus from the dual-process per- underlie recognition memory–recollection and familiarity (e.g., spective is that the memory impairments characteristic of later Diana, Reder, Arndt, & Park, 2006; Jacoby, 1991; Mandler, 1980; adulthood are due primarily to deficits in recollection rather than Reder, Nhouvanisvong, Schunn, Ayers, Angstadt, & Hiraki, 2000; familiarity (e.g., Buchler & Reder, 2007; Cohn, Emrich, & Mosco- Yonelinas, 1994, 1997, 2002). Recollection involves retrieving vitch, 2008; Healy, Light, & Chung, 2005; Hoyer & Verhaeghen, specific contextual associations, whereas familiarity is based on 2006; Jacoby, 1999; Light, Prull, LaVoie, & Healy, 2000; Prull, Dawes, Martin, Rosenberg, & Light, 2006; Rhodes, Castel, & Jacoby, 2008; Yonelinas, 2002). One line of evidence for this proposition is the pattern of Norbou G. Buchler, Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon Uni- age-related results in associative recognition studies. In associative versity, and U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, recognition tasks, subjects are exposed to lists of paired stimuli MD; Paige Faunce and Lynne M. Reder, Department of Psychology, (most often words) and are subsequently asked to discriminate Carnegie Mellon University; and Leah L. Light and Nisha Gottfredson, studied (intact) pairs from various types of lure pairs. Lure pairs Department of Psychology, Pitzer College. can consist of words that were studied but not together (rearranged Norbou G. Buchler is now in the Cognitive Sciences Branch of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground. Nisha Gottfredson pairs), one studied word and one new word (item pairs), or two is now at the Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at new words (novel pairs) (see Castel & Craik, 2003; Humphreys, Chapel Hill. 1976, 1978). Recollection is required to discriminate intact pairs This work was supported in part by fellowship support to the first author from rearranged pairs whose constituents were studied with dif- in the form of an institutional training Grant 5T32-MH019983-07 to ferent partners, because the individual words in these two types of Carnegie-Mellon University from the National Institute of Mental Health, pairs are equally familiar (Kelley & Wixted, 2001; Rotello & Heit, by Grant AGO 2452 from the National Institute on Aging to the third 1999, 2000; Rotello, Macmillan, & Van Tassel, 2000; Yonelinas, author, and also by Grant MH052808-08 from the National Institute of 1997). However, item familiarity can be used to discriminate Mental Health to the fifth author. We thank J. C. Van Ocker and Darlene among rearranged, item, and novel word pair foils (Buchler, Light, Olfman for their help with various phases of this project. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Norbou & Reder, 2008). G. Buchler, RDRL-HRS-E, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Cognitive Older adults are less able than young adults to discriminate Sciences Branch, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD 21005. E-mail: between intact and rearranged pairs in associative recognition [email protected] (e.g., Castel & Craik, 2003; Healy et al., 2005; Light, Patterson, 1 2 BUCHLER, FAUNCE, LIGHT, GOTTFREDSON, AND REDER Chung, & Healy, 2004; Naveh-Benjamin, 2000; see Old & Naveh- repetition of the word-pair affects both item and associative Benjamin, 2008, for a review). In addition, Castel and Craik found strength. In contrast, the manipulation of the number of associa- that the false alarm rates for both young and older adults increased tions to a given item (fan) selectively strengthens items and actu- with the number of study words reinstated at test, from novel pairs ally interferes with retrieval of those associations by creating (zero), to item pairs (one), to rearranged pairs (two), a result competitors at test. This point is elaborated later. attributed to differences in accumulated word familiarity. Older The second, relatively novel, method was to require a more adults had more false alarms for all types of word pair foils, complex response discrimination. Rather than simply making old/ consistent with the idea that their recognition judgments depend new judgments, subjects choose among five alternatives: (a) Old- more on familiarity-based processes in the face of a deficit in Old (original), (b) Old-Old (rearranged), (c) Old-New, (d) New- recollection. Old, and (e) New-New (see Buchler et al., 2008); we call this task Manipulations involving pair repetition (word or face pairs) the 5-PAR paradigm. The advantage of providing a set of more provide further evidence that associative recognition deficits in fine-grained response categories is that, when combined with the older adults derive from recollection deficits (e.g., Buchler et al., manipulations of item strength, associative strength, and interfer- 2008; Gallo, Sullivan, Daffner, Schacter, & Budson, 2004; Kelley ence, it is easier to discern the role of recollection and familiarity- & Wixted, 2001; Light et al., 2004; Malmberg & Xu, 2007; based recognition. Rhodes et al., 2008; Van Ocker, Light, Olfman, & Rivera, 2009). We included a third method, computational modeling, to help us From a dual-process perspective, pair repetition should increase disentangle the differential contributions of familiarity and recol- both familiarity and recollection because this repetition strength- lection to pair recognition when comparing the young and the ens both associative and item information. Therefore, we would older adults’ data. This seemed critical given that our study had expect repetition to increase both the hit rate for intact pairs and two within subject encoding factors (repetition and fan), five types the false alarm rate for rearranged pairs. Such a result—an increase of targets or foils, and five possible responses, yielding 75 condi- in both false alarms and hits with repetition (a pattern dubbed by tions per age group. Our goal was to build a computational model Jacoby (1999) as an ironic effect of repetition)—has been ob- that can account for the pattern of data for young adults using served in associative recognition in older adults (Light et al., 2004; representation and processing assumptions that we have used in Rhodes et al., 2008; Van Ocker et al., 2009). However, in young the past (e.g., Reder et al., 2000) and also to fit the data for older adults repetition may dramatically increase the hit rate to intact subjects by using just one more free parameter that we postulate pairs, while having little or no effect on the false alarm rate for affects ease of forming new associations and subsequently retriev- rearranged pairs (Cleary, Curran, & Greene, 2001; Gallo et al., ing them, that is, working memory (WM) capacity (Reder, Payn- 2004; Kelley & Wixted, 2001; Light et al., 2004; Rhodes et al., ter, Diana, Ngiam, & Dickison, 2008). 2008; Van Ocker et al., 2009, but see Malmberg & Xu, 2007, for exceptions). Overview of the Task One way to account for this set of results is to postulate a recall-to-reject mechanism (Jones & Jacoby, 2001; Kelley & During the study phase, some word pairs were repeated five Wixted, 2001; Rotello & Heit, 2000; Rotello, Macmillan, & Van times and some words appeared five times, but never with the Tassel, 2000; Yonelinas, 1997). The recall-to-reject account pro- same partners. In the latter condition, the familiarity of individual poses that rearranged word pairs (e.g., OCEAN–PEAR) are re- words in a pair is strengthened by repetition