No abstract

Accessing memories is often accompanied by both positive and negative consequences. For example, practice recognizing some visual images held in memory can improve memory for the practiced images and hurt memory for related images (i.e., recognition-induced forgetting). However, visual stimuli have been shown to improve memory for older adults by decreasing false memories. This suggests that older adults may be immune to recognition-induced forgetting and that recognition practice may decrease susceptibility to intrusion errors. We first tested the hypothesis that older adults are immune to recognitioninduced forgetting. We found older adults exhibit recognition-induced forgetting. Next, we tested the hypothesis that recognition practice decreases older adult's rates of intrusion errors. We found lower intrusion errors for novel objects from practiced categories. This represents a generalizable learning effect; practice recognizing a target object (e.g., your pill bottle) improves the rejection of new lures (e.g., identifying the pill bottle that is not yours).