Distortions of long-term memory (LTM) in the converging associates task are thought to arise from semantic associative processes and monitoring failures due to degraded verbatim and/or contextual memory. Traditionally, sensory-based coding is considered more prevalent than meaning-based coding in short-term memory (STM), whereas the converse characterizes LTM, leading to the expectation that false memory phenomena should be less robust in a canonical STM task. These expectations were violated in two experiments in which participants viewed lists of four semanticallyrelated words and were probed immediately following a filled 3-4 second retention interval or approximately 20 minutes later in a surprise recognition test. Corrected false recognition rates, confidence ratings, and Remember/Know judgments reveal similar false memory effects across STM and LTM conditions. These results indicate that compelling false memory illusions can be rapidly instantiated, and originate from processes that are not specific to LTM tasks, consistent with unitary models of memory.False memories refer to distortions of the source, details, or meaning of past experiences. In the laboratory, false long-term memories (LTM) are reliably produced with the converging associates or DRM paradigm (Deese, 1959;Roediger & McDermott, 1995), in which unstudied semantic associates ("related lure" words) are misremembered as studied items (see Gallo, 2006 for a comprehensive review). Moreover, false memories can be accompanied by high confidence ratings or strong feelings of recollection. Participants in DRM studies will avow qualitative memories of having studied lure words, and may feel equally confident in their recognition of lure and studied words (e.g., Anastasi, Rhodes, & Burns, 2000;Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Theoretical explanations of false memory are typically framed in terms of LTM processes, invoking associative activation and source monitoring failures (Gallo & Roediger, 2002;Robinson & Roediger, 1997;Roediger, McDermott, & Robinson, 1998), and further implicating variable strengths of verbatim memory traces and gist memory for semantic content (Brainerd, et al., 2008;Reyna & Brainerd, 1995).Recently, however, false memory effects have been reported in the domain of short-term memory (STM). Findings of false recognition and false recall from lists of four semanticallyrelated words occurring after mere seconds (Atkins & Reuter-Lorenz, 2008;Coane, et al., 2007) suggest that the processes responsible for false memories may be relatively delayinvariant. The vulnerability of STM to such distortion contrasts with conventional models of Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to P. A. Reuter-Lorenz, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109 (parl@umich.edu). Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the d...

Expectancy or placebo effects on cognitive function have not been well studied. To determine the effect of taking pills on cognitive function, 40 participants were randomly assigned to a pill or no-pill condition. Healthy seniors who took a 2-week supply of methylcellulose pills, which they were told was an experimental cognitive enhancer, were compared to seniors not taking any pills. There were 2 primary outcome measures defined prior to the study-Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) Word List delayed recall and Stroop color word task time-as well as 7 other cognitive outcome measures. There was a significant effect of pill taking on the 2 primary outcome measures. There was also an effect of pill taking on choice reaction time and Word List immediate recall but not on the other 5 secondary cognitive outcome measures. In an exploratory analysis of potential predictors of the expectancy effect, perceived stress and self-efficacy but not personality traits interacted with the pill-taking effect on cognitive function. Further characterizing and understanding this observed expectancy effect is important to maximize cognitive health and improve clinical trial design.

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Despite concern about cognitive decline in old age, few studies document the types and frequency of memory errors older adults make in everyday life. In the present study, 105 healthy older adults completed the Everyday Memory Questionnaire (EMQ; Sunderland, Harris, & Baddeley, 1983), indicating what memory errors they had experienced in the last 24 hours, the Memory Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (MSEQ; West, Thorn, & Bagwell, 2003), and other neuropsychological and cognitive tasks. EMQ and MSEQ scores were unrelated and made separate contributions to variance on the Mini Mental State Exam (MMSE; Folstein, Folstein, & McHugh, 1975), suggesting separate constructs. Tip-of-the-tongue errors were the most commonly reported, and the EMQ Faces/Places and New Things subscales were most strongly related to MMSE. These findings may help training programs target memory errors commonly experienced by older adults, and suggest which types of memory errors could indicate cognitive declines of clinical concern.

BackgroundTo determine factors that predict adherence to a mind-body intervention in a randomized trial.DesignWe analyzed adherence data from a 3-arm trial involving 135 generally healthy seniors 65–85 years of age randomized to a 6-month intervention consisting of: an Iyengar yoga class with home practice, an exercise class with home practice, or a wait-list control group. Outcome measures included cognitive function, mood, fatigue, anxiety, health-related quality of life, and physical measures. Adherence to the intervention was obtained by class attendance and biweekly home practice logs.ResultsThe drop-out rate was 13%. Among the completers of the two active interventions, average yoga class attendance was 77% and home practice occurred 64% of all days. Average exercise class attendance was 69% and home exercise occurred 54% of all days. There were no clear effects of adherence on the significant study outcomes (quality of life and physical measures). Class attendance was significantly correlated with baseline measures of depression, fatigue, and physical components of health-related quality of life. Significant differences in baseline measures were also found between study completers and drop-outs in the active interventions. Adherence was not related to age, gender, or education level.ConclusionHealthy seniors have good attendance at classes with a physically active intervention. Home practice takes place over half of the time. Decreased adherence to a potentially beneficial intervention has the potential to decrease the effect of the intervention in a clinical trial because subjects who might sustain the greatest benefit will receive a lower dose of the intervention and subjects with higher adherence rates may be functioning closer to maximum ability before the intervention. Strategies to maximize adherence among subjects at greater risk for low adherence will be important for future trials, especially complementary treatments requiring greater effort than simple pill-taking.

Cognitive training programs for older adults often result in improvements at the group level. However, there are typically large age and individual differences in the size of training benefits. These differences may be related to the degree to which participants implement the processes targeted by the training program. To test this possibility, we tested older adults in a memory-training procedure either under specific strategy instructions designed to encourage semantic, integrative encoding, or in a condition that encouraged time and attention to encoding but allowed participants to choose their own strategy. Both conditions improved the performance of old-old adults relative to an earlier study (Bissig & Lustig, 2007) and reduced self-reports of everyday memory errors. Performance in the strategy-instruction group was related to pre-existing ability, performance in the strategy-choice group was not. The strategy-choice group performed better on a laboratory transfer test of recognition memory, and training performance was correlated with reduced everyday memory errors. Training programs that target latent but inefficiently-used abilities while allowing flexibility in bringing those abilities to bear may best promote effective training and transfer. Keywords AGING; MEMORY; TRAINING; TRANSFER; COGNITIVE REHABILITATIONCognitive training programs provide a humbling -and often frustrating -reminder of how imprecise attempts to understand and modify human behavior remain. Training programs often fall into one of two categories: One method is to train participants on a specific strategy, such as the method of loci or the face-name mnemonic (e.g., Rebok & Balcerak, 1989;Yesavage & Rose, 1984). These programs often result in benefits on the training task but little or no transfer to other tasks. The other method uses a complex task (e.g., n-back, Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides, & Perrig, 2008) or set of tasks (e.g., Ball et al., 2002; Buschkuehl et al., this volume;Calero & Navarro, 2006;Craik et al., 2007;Loewenstein, Acevedo, Czaja, & Duara, 2004). This approach is more likely to show transfer to other tasks, but it is unclear what feature (s) of the training program are driving those gains. Another problem with many training programs is that the individuals who need training the most typically benefit the least: Both advanced age and lower initial ability are associated with reduced training benefits (Verhaeghen, Marcoen, & Goossens, 1992;Yesavage, Sheikh, Friedman, & Tanke, 1990).Email correspondence should be addressed to Cindy Lustig (clustig@umich.edu) or Kristin Flegal (kflegal@umich.edu). Print correspondence should be addressed to Cindy Lustig, Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043. Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychologic...

The efficacy of cognitive training is controversial, and research progress in the field requires an understanding of factors that promote transfer of training gains and their relationship to changes in brain activity. One such factor may be adaptive task difficulty, as adaptivity is predicted to facilitate more efficient processing by creating a prolonged mismatch between the supply of, and the demand upon, neural resources. To test this hypothesis, we measured behavioral and neural plasticity in fMRI sessions before and after 10 sessions of working memory updating (WMU) training, in which the difficulty of practiced tasks either adaptively increased in response to performance or was fixed. Adaptive training resulted in transfer to an untrained episodic memory task and activation decreases in striatum and hippocampus on a trained WMU task, and the amount of training task improvement was associated with near transfer to other WMU tasks and with hippocampal activation changes on both near and far transfer tasks. These findings suggest that cognitive training programs should incorporate adaptive task difficulty to broaden transfer of training gains and maximize efficiency of task-related brain activity.

Gist-based processing has been proposed to account for robust false memories in the converging associates task. The deep encoding processes known to enhance verbatim memory also strengthen gist memory and increase distortions of long-term memory (LTM). Recent research demonstrates that compelling false memory illusions are relatively delay-invariant, also occurring under canonical short-term memory (STM) conditions. To investigate the contribution of gist to false memory at short and long delays, processing depth was manipulated as participants encoded lists of four semantically-related words and were probed immediately following a filled 3-4 second retention interval or approximately 20 minutes later in a surprise recognition test. In two experiments, the encoding manipulation dissociated STM and LTM on the frequency, but not the phenomenology, of false memory. Deep encoding at STM increases false recognition rates at LTM, but confidence ratings and Remember/Know judgments are similar across delay and do not differ as a function of processing depth. These results suggest that some shared and some unique processes underlie false memory illusions at short and long delays.Processing depth and false recognition in STM and LTM 3