Memory for news in young and old adults

Staying informed without a cost: No effect of positive news media on stress reactivity, memory and affect in young adults

INTRODUCTION

We read, see and hear news from various media sources every day. A large majority of the news is negative. A previous study from our laboratory showed that reading negative news is associated with both increased stress reactivity (measured via the stress hormone cortisol) and recall of the negative news segments in women.

OBJECTIVES

The present study investigated the effects of positive news on cortisol stress reactivity, memory and affect using a methodology highly similar to the study on negative news that was previously used by our team.

METHODS

Sixty-two healthy participants aged between 18 and 35 years (81% women) were randomly exposed to either positive or neutral news segments, followed by a laboratory stressor. We assessed participants' affect three times during the procedure and measured cortisol in saliva eight times (at 10-minute intervals). Twenty-four hours later, participants were contacted by phone to assess their recall of the news segments.

RESULTS

Results showed that exposure to positive news, relative to neutral news, did not modulate participants' cortisol levels in response to the laboratory stressor. Positive news had no impact on memory recall of the news and did not change participants' positive or negative affect. Bayes factors suggested that these nonsignificant results are not attributable to low statistical power.

CONCLUSION

Contrary to negative news, positive and neutral news do not modulate stress reactivity, memory and affect. These results suggest that people can stay informed without physiological and psychological costs when the news to which they are exposed adopt a positive or neutral approach.

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

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.

The Difference between Right and Wrong: Accuracy of Older and Younger Adults' Story Recall

Sharing stories is an important social activity in everyday life. This study used fine-grained content analysis to investigate the accuracy of recall of two central story elements: the gist and detail of socially-relevant stories. Younger (M age = 28.06) and older (M age = 75.03) American men and women (N = 63) recalled fictional stories that were coded for (i) accuracy of overall gist and specific gist categories and (ii) accuracy of overall detail and specific detail categories. Findings showed no age group differences in accuracy of overall gist or detail, but differences emerged for specific categories. Older adults more accurately recalled the gist of when the event occurred whereas younger adults more accurately recalled the gist of why the event occurred. These differences were related to episodic memory ability and education. For accuracy in recalling details, there were some age differences, but gender differences were more robust. Overall, women remembered details of these social stories more accurately than men, particularly time and perceptual details. Women were also more likely to accurately remember the gist of when the event occurred. The discussion focuses on how accurate recall of socially-relevant stories is not clearly age-dependent but is related to person characteristics such as gender and episodic memory ability/education.

There is no news like bad news: women are more remembering and stress reactive after reading real negative news than men

With the advent of specialized television channels offering 24-hour coverage, Internet and smart phones, the possibility to be constantly in contact with the media has increased dramatically in the last decades. Despite this higher access to knowledge, the impact media exposure has on healthy individuals remains poorly studied. Given that most information conveyed in the media is negative and that upon perception of threat, the brain activates the stress system, which leads to cortisol secretion, we decided to determine how healthy individuals react to media information. Accordingly, we investigated whether reading real negative news (1) is physiologically stressful, (2) modulates one’s propensity to be stress reactive to a subsequent stressor and (3) modulates remembrance for these news. Sixty participants (30 women, 30 men) were randomly assigned to either twenty-four real neutral news excerpts or to twenty-four real negative excerpts for 10 minutes. They were then all exposed to a well-validated psychosocial stressor, the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), which consists of an anticipation phase of 10 minutes and a test phase of 10 minutes. A total of eight salivary cortisol samples were collected, at 10-minutes intervals, throughout the experimental procedure. One day later, a free recall of the news was performed. Results showed that although reading negative news did not lead to change in cortisol levels (p>0.05), it led to a significant increase in cortisol to a subsequent stressor in women only (p<0.001). Also, women in the negative news condition experienced better memory for these news excerpts compared to men (p<0.01). These results suggest a potential mechanism by which media exposure could increase stress reactivity and memory for negative news in women.

Comprehension and storage of sequentially presented radio news items by healthy elderly

In the normal aging processes, complaints of memory loss and auditory comprehension are not uncommon, principally in complex and cognitively demanding situations.

Objective

The objective of this study was to investigate skills of discourse comprehension and retention in a natural situation, by healthy aged in relation to variables such as age, schooling and cognitive screening measurement.

Methods

Thirty healthy elderly participated in the study (mean age=73.56 yrs; SD=6.26 and mean schooling=8.6 yrs; SD=4.41). Twelve news items were recorded and presented in three sequences of four news-groups. Participants were instructed to listen to the four news items, and upon completion were questioned about one of them.

Results

We found no age or schooling effect on the performance of the subjects. The participants achieved almost full scores on all answers (ceiling effect).

Discussion

The heterogeneity of elderly and cognitive compensation in natural situations could explain these results of elderly behavior.