Reading the news on Twitter: Source and item memory for social media in younger and older adults

Abstract

Background: Social media content is well-remembered, possibly because of its personal relevance and gossipy nature. It is unclear whether the mnemonic advantage of social media extends to a population less familiar with these platforms and whether knowing the content is from social media sources influences memory. This study examined how the presentation of news-like content in social media affected both item and source memory across two age groups. Younger adults (n = 42) and older adults (n = 32) studied tweets and news headlines that appeared in the format of Twitter posts or CNN headlines-these items were designed to be either congruent (e.g., tweets formatted as Twitter posts) or incongruent (e.g., tweets formatted as CNN headlines). Results: For item memory, both age groups correctly recognized tweets more than headlines. Source identification was more accurate when format and content were congruent than incongruent. Signal detection analyses indicated that the source advantage for congruent items was largely driven by a bias to select the format that matched the content's original source and that this tendency was stronger in older adults. Conclusions: These results replicate previous literature on the mnemonic advantage of social media content. Although both younger and older adults remembered the content of social media better than the content of news sources, older adults were more sensitive than younger adults to congruency effects in source memory. These findings suggest that older adults rely more on their prior knowledge of conventional language and style in traditional and social media.

Online co‐witness discussions also lead to eyewitness memory distortion: The MORI‐v technique

“…In summary, the current studies introduce a virtual variant of the MORI technique and replicate previous findings within the memory conformity literature (French et al, 2008; Garry et al, 2008, 2009; Hirokawa et al, 2006; Ito et al, 2019; Mori, 2003, 2007). Moreover, our experiments provide converging evidence with previous research showing that memory phenomena are affected by different online manipulations (Bourne et al, 2020; Brashier & Marsh, 2020; Giebl et al, in press; Stone & Storm, in press. ; Zimmerman & Brown‐Schmidt, 2020).…”

“…In these virtual settings, shared information is not often fact‐checked, which could mean that today people are more exposed to misinformation than ever before (Marsh & Rajaram, 2019). This massive exposure to erroneous and ever‐changing information might have a remarkable effect on memory accuracy, and we already have compelling evidence pointing in that direction (Bourne et al, 2020; Brashier & Marsh, 2020; Giebl et al, in press; Stone & Storm, in press. ; Zimmerman & Brown‐Schmidt, 2020).…”

Ecological validity of don’t remember and don’t know for distinguishing accessibility- versus availability-based retrieval failures in older and younger adults: knowledge for news events

“…Older and younger Umanath et al Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2023) 8:2 adults differ along a number of dimensions, especially those of relevance to the present questions, as mentioned above: memory, knowledge, and metacognition. Older adults tend to attend to news more than younger adults, at least traditional news media like radio, newspapers, and television (Bourne et al, 2020). As such, older adults would, overall, outperform younger adults in overall accuracy and might experience more DR responses, indicating an awareness that the information is available, albeit temporarily inaccessible, consistent with greater and maintained general knowledge (Park, 2000) as well as overall increased experience of retrieval failures (Cavanaugh et al, 1983).…”

Adaptive Education: Learning and Remembering with a Stone-Age Brain

“…We might expect social stimuli to be remembered better than nonsocial stimuli, for example, because of their potential relevance to fitness. In fact, posts from Facebook, which naturally elicit social thinking, are remembered far better than matched sentences from books or even faces (Mickes et al, 2013 ); similarly, people show better long-term recognition of Twitter posts than matched headlines from news sources (Bourne et al, 2020 ). More generally, as suggested earlier, animate (living) things, such as people and animals, should be remembered better than inanimate (nonliving) objects.…”