Investigating the Effects of Veridicality on Age Differences in Verbal Working Memory

In the typical loaded verbal working memory (WM) span task (e.g., Daneman & Carpenter, 1980), participants judge the veridicality of a series of sentences while simultaneously storing the sentence final word for later recall. Performance declines as the number of sentences is increased; aging exacerbates this decline. The present study examined whether veridicality (whether the sentence was true or false) moderated age differences on a verbal working memory task. Results suggested that veridicality interacted with age and span size such that older adults were more negatively affected by false sentences, particularly under the lowest WM demands. Findings are discussed in terms of the role that veridicality may play in age differences in verbal working memory.