False Facial Recognition: the Relationship between False Alarms and Frontal Lobe Functioning in Older Adults

Previous research has shown that older adults are more susceptible to false facial recognition than younger adults, possibly related to changes in the frontal cortices. We hypothesized that false recognition would be related to poorer performance on measures of memory monitoring, decision-making, and “frontal” functioning. Forty-one older adults, classified as high or low frontal based on standard neuropsychological measures, completed a face recognition memory task, a Feeling of Knowing (FOK) task, and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). There was a correlation between false alarm rates and response bias on the recognition memory test with bias on the FOK task. High falsealarmers had a liberal response bias and were overconfident in their memory predictions relative to low false-alarmers. Performance did not relate to standard neuropsychological tests, potentially due to their sensitivity to dorsolateral prefrontal functioning, while the FOK task and the IGT are related to ventromedial prefrontal functioning.