Neural Correlates Mediating False Recollection †Free Samples

Question: Discuss about the Neural Correlates Mediating False Recollection. Answer: Introduction Memory is defined as the recollection of information. It is ascertained as implicit or explicit memory that was experienced in the recent or distant past. As age increases, the capacity to recall memories decreases. However, a child also generally has lesser memory to recall than that of an adult. The recollection capability of texts increases from childhood to adulthood and then starts decreasing in the course of aging towards older ages. Multiple studies have been conducted on the deficit in memory with respect to age on texts. According to some researches, memory decreases in older people as they utilise the non-optimal strategies relating to attentional allocation of linguistic processes less often then young. For example, older age readers are less likely to relate newly introduced concepts with concepts that are already known to them. Thus it results in fragmented, fragile and less distinctive mental representation of the texts (Fine, Shing Naveh-Benjamin, 2018). Remembering texts is cognated to attentional resources of conceptual processing. Multiple researches have concluded that there have been differences in recollecting and recognizing texts between the young and older people in case of explicit memory measures. On the other hand, recollecting and recognizing texts have not shown significant differences between the young and older people in case of implicit memory measures. Both the young and older people maintain equivalent efficiency in implicit tasks (Staresina et al., 2016). Thus, the researches tested for the differences between recollecting and recognizing texts between young and old people. Recollection mainly involves retrieving the information that is stored in the memory. The retrieval capacity decreases in people as they grow older. According to another study, it has been seen that the impairment of memory along with increase of age not only depends on the ability to retrieve, but also on the nature of the information that has to be retrieved. It is known that implicit memory measures are dependent on processing which is perceptual in nature and explicit memory measures is dependent on processing which is conceptual in nature (Dennis, Bowman Peterson, 2014). Studies show that as age increases, the conceptual processing of the memory grows weaker thus resulting in lesser recollection power (Koen Yonelinas, 2014). Another important result from another study observed that the recollection ability is lacking in infants. It is inconceivable for infants to recognize and recollect texts during their infancy stage. Thus, gradually with an increase in age and education, young children develops recollection power (Humphrey, 2017). After a particular age during adulthood, the recollection power starts to decrease again. And eventually as a person grows older, their ability to recall texts also similarily starts to decrease. As such, the recollection graph follows the shape of an inverted U (Leshikar, Dulas Duarte, 2015). The current research was conducted as an experimental study. The purpose to is to find out if the ability to recall is impressed upon age. To answer this research question, participants were selected to provide the statistics necessary for analyses. The results were then interpreted in the following sections. The main aim of this research is to evaluate whether there is any relationship between age and recollection capacity of a person. Appropriate hypothesis testing techniques have been applied to test the differences in the recollecting power of the participants in the two experimental groups. And to conduct the hypothesis test, the following null and alternate hypothesis have been constructed. The null hypothesis to ascertain the results is that there is no difference in the recollecting power between younger and older people. The alternate hypothesis is that there are significant differences in the recollecting power between younger and older people. The dataset that is used for this study have been modified from the original dataset used by Howell (2012) for his research. The data here is collected from a pre-recorded information. Thus, the study is based on secondary data. Selected participants were provided with a set of texts and were instructed to remember it. The participants were then tested on their ability recall the texts provided to them. The amount of text recalled by the participants were recorded as their recall ability and the results were applied in One-Way Between Groups ANOVA in this current research. In addition, a correlational analysis was also applied to test whether there is any relationship between age and recollection capability as it provides information on whether the two different variables are positively related or negatively related. To test the intensity of the correlation is to what extent, regression analysis was applied to provide information on whether recollection capability increases or decrea ses with the increase in age of the participants. This analysis was chosen as it tests the degree of change in the dependent variable with unit change in the independent variable. The research conducted had a sample of 100 participants. Among the 100 participants, 50 participants between the age of 18 to 30 years of age were placed in the Young Group and 50 participants between the age of 55 to 65 were placed in the Older Group. It was also noted that amongst the 100 participants, 56 of the participants were female and 44 of the participants were male. As such there are more female participants in this research than male participants. Though there is not a huge difference between the gender demographic of the participants, it is still possible that the sample collected may represent the population appropriately. Table 1: Frequency table indicating the Gender of the participants Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Valid female 56 56.0 56.0 56.0 male 44 44.0 44.0 100.0 Total 100 100.0 100.0 One of the variables that needs to be accounted for is the level of education of the participants. Table 2 shows the number of years of education received by the participants and from the analysis, 56 out of 100 participants have completed 13 years of education; 26 out of 100 participants have completed 15 years of education; and 18 out of 100 participants have completed up to 14 years of education. The information eliminates the confound of education being a variable that may have affected the reliability of the data collected since the participants were considerably educated thus are relatively competent to participate in this study Table 2: Frequency table indicating the Educational qualification of the participants Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Valid 13.00 56 56.0 56.0 56.0 14.00 18 18.0 18.0 74.0 15.00 26 26.0 26.0 100.0 Total 100 100.0 100.0 Before proceeding with any further analysis, the tests of normality was applied on the data obtained from the participants of this research. The test was mainly conducted on the recollecting capability of the people. Thus, the test of normality has been applied on the recollection variable. To determine if normality assumptions have been met, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was applied as the sample size more than 50. The Shapiro-Wilk test is mainly applied for interpretation when sample size is smaller than 50. Referring to the table of results of the normality tests, it can be seen that the significance value is less than .05, 5% level of significance. Thus, the normality assumptions are violated for the recollection variable. This is further supported by the residual plot shown in Figure 3. The residuals should follow a linear trend is the does not violate the normality assumptions. In the current research, the residual plot does not follow the linear trend thus, the test of normality assumptions are violated by the recollection variable. Table 3: Tests of Normality Kolmogorov-Smirnova Shapiro-Wilk Statistic df Sig. Statistic df Sig. Recall .137 100 .000 .942 100 .000 a. Lilliefors Significance Correction Normality assumption for the variable RecallNext, to test the relationship between the variables of age and recollection power of the participants, correlation and regression analysis have been applied. The results of the correlation analysis supports that the correlation coefficient has been obtained as -0.286. Thus, it can be said that age and recollecting power of the participants are negatively related. Although the corelation is weak, it does not underpin that with an increase in age the recalling power of the participants decreased. Table 4: Correlation between age and recall age Recall age Pearson Correlation 1 -.286** Sig. (2-tailed) .004 N 100 100 Recall Pearson Correlation -.286** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .004 N 100 100 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). It can be observed from the regression analysis that the regression model of age and recollection power is significant. This is further supported by the observation that as age increases by one year, the recalling power of the participant decreases by 0.057 times. Thus it is likely that through the regression analysis, only 8.2 percent of the variability in the recalling power can be explained by age. Table 5: Model Summary for regression between Age and Recall Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate 1 .286a .082 .073 4.999 a. Predictors: (Constant), age Table 6: ANOVA for the variable recall with respect to age Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. 1 Regression 218.587 1 218.587 8.746 .004b Residual 2449.203 98 24.992 Total 2667.790 99 a. Dependent Variable: Recall b. Predictors: (Constant), age Table 7: Regression Coefficientsa Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients t Sig. B Std. Error Beta 1 (Constant) 14.406 1.069 13.472 .000 age -.057 .019 -.286 -2.957 .004 a. Dependent Variable: Recall As it was observed that there is a weak relationship between age and recalling power, an Independent Sample t-test was applied to compare the recalling powers of Young Group (n = 50) and Older Group (n = 50). The t test was statistically significant (M = 3.10, SD = ____), t(98) = 3.11, p .05. Application of the G*power software also showed the Cohens d is d = 2.5 which is higher than 0.8. As such, it supports that the sample size selected is likely to be effective. The null hypothesis is rejected. Hence, there is significant difference between the recollecting power between Young Group and Older Group. From the results, it is likely that the regression analysis of the sample may support that recollecting power decreases with the increase in age. Table 8: Group Statistics AgeGroup N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean Recall Young 50 13.16 5.787 .818 Older 50 10.06 4.007 .567 Table 9: Independent Samples Test Levene's Test for Equality of Variances t-test for Equality of Means F Sig. t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Difference Std. Error Difference 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper Recall Equal variances assumed 16.132 .000 3.114 98 .002 3.100 .995 1.125 5.075 Equal variances not assumed 3.114 87.209 .002 3.100 .995 1.122 5.078 Discussion From the analysis mentioned under the results section, it can be observed that the results from the current study is in line with other similar researches. There is a significantly lower level of recollecting power in the Older Group than the Young Group and thee sample size applied in this current study was efficient for the purpose of this research. There variable of age was categorised into two levels young and older. The selected participants of the current study were suiting as the age of the participants appropriately represented the age groups targeted for this study. None of the participants selected were aged between 30 and 55 years and below 18 years in order to further augment the targeted age group for this study. The correlation obtained in the current research was determined that there is a negative relationship between age and recollecting power and that correlation between the 2 main variables were weak. According to other similar studies, it was found that the recollecting power with respect to age is U shaped. This finding was not obtained in the current study. It is likely that if more age groups were targeted in this study, the result may have reflected the same as the other similar studies. Also, it might have been more accurate to use the same participants at different age stages and conduct within group ANOV A to reduce any unaccountable confounds due to the participants selected in the study. There sample size considered for this study was appropriate and has shown effectiveness in representing the population. Conclusion Based on the results from the this study, it likely that there is significant differences in the recalling capability of texts between young and old people. The recalling power in the younger population is possibly better or higher than the older population. It was also observed from the correlation and the regression analysis that with the increase in age, there has been a significant decrease in the capacity to recall texts. However, due to the current research only focusing on two specific age groups, the study would have been more accurate if we considered a wider range of age group and considered doing a long term study based on the same group of participants throughout difference age stages. References Dennis, N. A., Bowman, C. R., Peterson, K. M. (2014). Age-related differences in the neural correlates mediating false recollection.Neurobiology of Aging,35(2), 395-407. Fine, H. C., Shing, Y. L., Naveh-Benjamin, M. (2018). 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