Schedule of Events | Symposia

“Recall-to-reject”: A behavioral and neural investigation into age differences in the strategic use of recollection to promote lure detection

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Rebecca Wagner¹ (rmw5981@psu.edu), Caitlin Bowman², Nancy Dennis¹; ¹The Pennsylvania State University, ²University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Using behavioral and representational similarity analyses (RSA), we examined age differences in the process of recall-to-reject, a recollection- and monitoring-based retrieval strategy important for the accurate detection of perceptually similar, yet novel information (i.e., related lures; Brainerd et al., 2003). Previous work suggests that the reliance on recall-to-reject declines with increasing age due to changes in verbatim recollection and monitoring processes (Gallo et al., 2006). Through our investigation, we tested whether age differences in the reliance on recall-to-reject would persist when younger and older adults are given a recent reminder of the original target item, as reminders have been shown to strengthen and increase the accessibility of target representations during lure rejections (Brainerd et al., 2003). Behavioral results show that when targets are re-presented during retrieval, younger adults show sharp increases in reliance on recall-to-reject when identifying similar lures while older adults show a smaller benefit. Neuroimaging results corroborated these findings, showing that in regions associated with recollection of visual stimuli – including the lateral occipital cortex, midline occipital cortex, fusiform gyrus, angular gyrus, and hippocampus – younger adults displayed increased pattern similarity between recollected targets and rejected lures compared to older adults. Thus, despite providing reminders of the original target during retrieval, older adults continue to show reduced reliance on recollection rejection to support accurate lure rejections. This, in turn, may contribute to the reductions in memory accuracy observed in older populations.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Development & aging