Are older adults less efficient in making attributions about the origin of memories for web interaction?
Les internautes âgés sont-ils moins en mesure d’attribuer une source à leur souvenir de l’interaction avec le Web ?
Résumé
Potential age-related differences in making attributions about the origin of remembered events in Web interaction are examined in the present study. A Web-based source-monitoring paradigm was modeled to assess both item and source memory, which incorporated typical Web search tasks. Older adults exhibited a reduced ability in navigation-oriented search, where both a measure of processing speed and a measure of executive function were significant predictors of performance. They were less able to recognize and recollect items previously encountered in web pages. However, source memory was not more impaired with age than item memory. Interestingly, although the addition of cognitive operations as a cue to source had no impact on source memory, it resulted in increased recognition and recollection in the older adults. More generally, recognition and recollection appeared to be dissociated from source memory as a function of different individual difference measures.