This proposal focuses on adult age differences in impressions of forgetful persons in social contexts. Understanding how younger and older adults' view forgetful people is an important issue with implications for interpersonal relationships and social opportunities in late adulthood. Past research has documented an age-based double standard, where forgetful behavior in younger adults is attributed to lack of attention and effort, but the very same forgetful behavior in older adults is attributed to lack of ability and considered a sign of mental difficulty. Isolating the variables that may lead to differential impressions of forgetful younger and older people is an important step in understanding how older adults are perceived in social contexts. The objectives of the proposed research are to: a) understand how younger and older adults differ in memory appraisal of forgetful others; b) provide new evidence on the role of the consequences of the forgetting on people's perceptions of memory failures; and c) explore the influence of individual differences in knowledge of memory aging and self-reported memory ability on memory appraisal of others. Two experiments are proposed that utilize a person-perception paradigm. Participants read short vignettes that describe a fictitious character who has forgotten something and a minor consequence (merely an inconvenience) or a major consequence (causes greater problems) of the forgetting follows. Mixed factorial designs are used with participant age (young, old) and character age (young, old) as between-group variables and consequence (minor, major) as a repeated measures variable. Dependent measures include attribution and memory opinion ratings. In Experiment 1, the consequences of the forgetting are confined to the forgetful character. In Experiment 2, the forgetful character and others in his/her social environment experience the consequences of the forgetting. Expected results will provide new evidence on the role of person and situational variables in causal attributions of memory failures and a framework for further research on memory appraisal in adulthood.
| Cherry, Katie E; Brigman, Susan (2005) Memory failures appraisal in younger and older adults: role of individual difference and event outcome variables. J Genet Psychol 166:435-50 |
