The application seeks support for training in social cognition and aging at the University of Michigan under the direction of Drs. Norbert Schwartz and Denis Park. A series of experiments are proposed to examine age-related differences in the "illusion of truth" effect for medical information. This effect occurs when information that seems familiar is thought of as true solely on the grounds that it has been encountered before, and even when the information was originally identified as false. Because of older adults' increased consumption of medical services, the illusion effect for medical information could have dangerous consequences. The effect seems to occur when people cannot explicitly remember the truth value of information but implicitly take the experience of familiarity to be diagnostic of truth. Because of age-related declines in explicit (but not implicit) memory performance, this effect may be exaggerated in older adults, with the paradoxical result that more warnings about the falseness of information can late create an increased beliefs in the truth of that information. The proposed research investigates this possibility along with ways to change the illusion of truth: cognitive load might increase the effect and attention to multiple memory cues might decrease the effect. Finally, reversing people's implicit beliefs about familiarity would create the illusion of falseness, with the consequence that people would disbelieve familiar true information.
NIH ExPorter
NIH ExPorter