Self-referencing and false memory in mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Objective: The present study explored the role of self-referencing on false alarm rates among people with mild cognitive impairment suggestive of the early signs of the Alzheimer's disease pathophysiologic process (MCI-AD). Given that people with MCI-AD demonstrate higher rates of false alarms and that false alarms have been shown to increase for self-relevant information, it was predicted that people with MCI-AD would experience a disproportionate increase in memory errors for highly self-related information. Method: Patients with a diagnosis of MCI-AD (n = 23) and healthy control participants (n = 27) rated words for self-descriptiveness or commonness and completed a surprise recognition test. Results: Contrary to expectations, results indicated that people with MCI-AD were at no greater risk for false alarms than were control participants as a function of self-descriptiveness, relative to a control condition. Despite the MCI-ADs' greater bias to say "yes" in the self condition, increasing self-descriptiveness did not lead to higher false alarm rates and did not impair performance in the self condition relative to commonness judgments. Conclusions: Therefore, although people with MCI-AD may be more susceptible to memory errors, they are at no greater risk of self-related errors than healthy control participants.