User:Sophie Geiß/sandbox

Aging
Looking at age related differences in source monitoring, several studies show, that older adults perform worse compared to younger adults. Evidence from cognitive-behavioral studies suggests, that older adults show memory binding deficits and memory source deficits, that are greater than item memory deficits. The impaired performance in source monitoring by older adults is further explained by studies showing, that they have difficulties in encoding perceptual cues.

The prefrontal cortex is affected by aging. This leads to a decline in cognitive function and might result in the inferior performance in source monitoring by older adults, compared to younger ones. Further studies suggest the importance of the hippocampus. With increasing age, the hippocampal activity is reduced in long-term memory tasks.

Emotion
Experienced emotions (e.g. arousal) enhance perceptual processing even on a low level, e.g. contrast sensitivity. Items of emotional information are better recognized compared to neutral ones. Memory of emotional events is often strongly vivid, because of the interaction between the hippocampus and the amygdala. This results in enhanced remembering of source information and higher confidence in doing so.

Regarding age-related differences in memory performance, the gap between younger and older adults is narrower for emotional events, compared to non-emotional events. For emotional contexts, memory relies on cognitive processes, that are preserved in older adults.