| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 心理學研究所 === 95 === Contextual information plays an important role in human recognition memory. A large body of studies shows a strong evidence of text-induced false recognition. However, little investigates the issue regarding whether there also exists the evidence of context-induced false recognition. Furthermore, few studies examine the possible neuropsychological mechanism underlying context effect of recognition memory though a binding processing between text and context has been proposed to account for it. Literature shows that medial temporal lobes get involved in binding processing per se while frontal lobes are responsible for generating binding process. Because of binding deficits evident in normal aging, it would be expected that normal elderly individuals’ recognition memory might be vulnerable to context effects. The present study was thus to explore issues of whether normal elderly people evidence context-induced false recognition, and of the possible neuropsychological mechanism underlying context-related false recognition. Twenty normal elderly and 29 young adults participated in the present study, and each subject received a battery of neuropsychological tests and a visual recognition memory task containing both text and context feature information. The results revealed remarkable evidence of context-induced false recognition memory in normal elderly subjects, but it is not the case for normal younger subjects. Normal elderly subjects’ performance on the neurocogntive tests, particularly the executive and memory function ones, was also significantly poor compared with their normal younger counterparts. Based on the results, it appears that normal elderly individuals’ recognition memory was vulnerable to context effects and the vulnerability might be associated with dorsal prefrontal- and mesial temporal-related neurocogntive changes mainly reflected by conventional neuropsychological tests. Further investigation with functional neuroimaging tools would be helpful for delineating specific neural substrates responsible for context-induced false recognition.
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