Are older adults less efficient in making attributions about the origin of memories for web interaction?

IntroductionAs people age, they may be less likely to recollect where or when an event took place. However, few studies of source monitoring and aging have used tasks that are similar to what people do in everyday life.ObjectivePotential age-related differences in making attributions about the origin of remembered events in Web interaction are examined in the present study.MethodsA Web-based source-monitoring paradigm was modelled to assess both item and source memory, which incorporated typical Web search tasks.ResultsOlder adults exhibited a reduced ability in navigation-oriented search, where both a measure of processing speed and a measure of executive function were significant predictors of performance. They were less able to recognize and recollect items previously encountered in web pages. However, source memory was not more impaired with age than item memory. Interestingly, although the addition of cognitive operations as a cue to source had no impact on source memory, it resulted in increased recognition and recollection in the older adults.ConclusionMore generally, recognition and recollection appeared to be dissociated from source memory as a function of different individual difference measures.

RésuméL’étude examine l’effet de l’âge dans la capacité à attribuer la source des informations suite à la recherche sur le Web. Un paradigme de monitorage de la source examine le souvenir des faits et le souvenir de la source, en contrastant deux tâches typiques de la recherche d’information sur le Web. Les internautes âgés montrent une moindre habileté dans la recherche de liens de navigation, là où la vitesse de traitement et les fonctions exécutives prédisent les performances. Ils montrent également une moindre reconnaissance et une moindre remémoration consciente des informations traitées. Toutefois, le souvenir de la source n’est pas plus affecté que la mémoire de faits. La possibilité d’utiliser la tâche de recherche comme indice de source n’a pas d’effet sur le souvenir de la source mais améliore la reconnaissance et la remémoration consciente chez les internautes âgés. Plus généralement, la reconnaissance et la remémoration consciente semblent être dissociées du souvenir de source en fonction de différentes mesures des différences interindividuelles.