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Falsely remembering information can have negative consequences for day-to-day functioning and can be especially problematic for older adults who often experience higher rates of false memory. Because there is considerable variability between older adults in memory and cognition, it is essential that we understand the factors that place older individuals at risk for developing false memories. Whereas lower frontal functioning has previously been related to false memory in general, prior research suggests that there may also be domain-specificity in the factors associated with false memory. To test this possibility, 211 young adults and 152 older adults completed tasks measuring semantic false memory, perceptual false memory, frontal functioning, semantic discrimination, and perceptual discrimination. Factor analyses revealed that – contrary to predictions – individual differences in semantic and perceptual false memory were best represented by a single, overarching false memory factor. Although cognitive abilities were generally not related to false memory when assessed together, semantic discrimination, perceptual discrimination, and frontal functioning were all negatively associated with false memory in isolation, and jointly predicted 37% of the variance in younger adults and 40% in older adults. Importantly, the extent to which these cognitive abilities protected against false memory did not differ between older and younger adults. Results suggest that for both older and younger adults, individual differences in the tendency to falsely remember information are captured by a single overarching construct that has negative (yet redundant) associations with various cognitive abilities.
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Effects of the physical and social environment on youth cognitive performance
Abstract Individual differences in children's cognitive abilities impact life and health outcomes. What factors influence these individual differences during development? Here, we test whether children's environments predict cognitive performance, independent of well‐characterized socioeconomic effects. We analyzed data from 9002 9‐ to 10‐year olds from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, an ongoing longitudinal study with community samples across the United States. Using youth‐ and caregiver‐report questionnaires and national database registries (e.g., neighborhood crime, walkability), we defined principal components summarizing children's home, school, neighborhood, and cultural environments. In two independent samples (ns = 3475, 5527), environmental components explained unique variance in children's general cognitive ability, executive functioning, and learning/memory abilities. Furthermore, increased neighborhood enrichment was associated with an attenuated relationship between sociodemographics and general cognitive abilities. Thus, the environment accounts for unique variance in cognitive performance in children and should be considered alongside sociodemographic factors to better understand brain functioning and behavior across development.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1952050
- PAR ID:
- 10366696
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Developmental Psychobiology
- Volume:
- 64
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 0012-1630
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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