Attempting to avoid false memories in the Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm: Assessing the combined influence of practice and warnings in young and old adults

False memory paradigms can offer leverage on understanding the breakdowns in episodic memory that occur with healthy aging (see Balota, Cortese, et al., 1999; Budson, Daffner, Desikan, & Schacter, 2000; Kensinger & Schacter, 1999; Norman & Schacter, 1997; Tun, Wingfield, Rosen, & Blanchard, 1998; Watson, Balota, & SergentMarshall, 2001). In general, studies have demonstrated that relative to young adults, healthy old adults have impaired veridical memory (i.e., memory for information that has been presented) but equivalent or enhanced false memory (i.e., memory for information that has not been presented). For example, in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) false memory paradigm, participants might be presented with the following words, all of which are related to the nonpresented critical word sleep: bed, rest, awake, tired, dream, wake, snooze, blanket, doze, slumber, snore, nap, peace, yawn, drowsy (see Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). As suggested by Balota, Cortese, et al. (1999), avoiding a false memory for a critical word requires one to differentiate between highly activated but nonpresented critical words and studied words. Hence, age-related increases in false memories may be due to a breakdown in control systems that differentiate the activation of critical words in internal, associative networks from the actual presentation of words at encoding (see Balota, Dolan, & Duchek, 2000; Benjamin, 2001; Hasher & Zacks, 1988; Hicks & Marsh, 1999; Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993; Roediger, Balota, & Watson, 2001). In agreement with this idea, Sommers and Huff (2003) have recently shown that people’s susceptibility to interference effects in the Stroop task correlates with their susceptibility to false memory effects.