Ageing and the Moses illusion: older adults fall for Moses but if asked directly, stick with Noah.

نویسندگان

  • Sharda Umanath
  • Patrick O Dolan
  • Elizabeth J Marsh
چکیده

Many people respond "two" to the question "How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the ark?", even though they know the reference should be to Noah. The Moses Illusion demonstrates a failure to apply stored knowledge (Erickson & Mattson, 1981). Of interest was whether older adults' robust knowledge bases would protect them from vulnerability to this illusion. Of secondary interest were any age differences in the memorial consequences of the illusion, and whether older adults' prior knowledge would protect them from later reproducing information from distorted questions (e.g., later saying that Moses took two animals of each kind on the ark). Surprisingly, older adults fell for the Moses Illusion more often than did younger adults. However, falling for the illusion did not affect older adults' later memory; they were less suggestible than young adults. Most importantly, older adults were more likely to recover from exposure to distorted questions and respond correctly. Explanations of these findings, drawing on theories of cognitive ageing, are discussed.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Incomplete Meaning Processing: Moses Illusion And Metaphor Understanding

EXTENDED ABSTRACT This talk will present an ACT-R model that uni-es two phenomena in text comprehension: Moses illusion and metaphor understanding. Empirical data about Moses illusion shows that, in about 45% of cases, people are not able to detect distortions in sentences like How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the ark?, in spite of being instructed to look for distortions and in ...

متن کامل

The Moses, mega-Moses, and Armstrong illusions: integrating language comprehension and semantic memory.

This study develops a new theory of the Moses illusion, observed in responses to general knowledge questions such as, "How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?" People often respond "two" rather than "zero" despite knowing that Noah, not Moses, launched the Ark. Our theory predicted two additional types of conceptual error demonstrated here: the Armstrong and mega-Moses illusion...

متن کامل

fluenCy And the deteCtion of misleAding questions: low ProCessing fluenCy AttenuAtes the moses illusion

when asked, “how many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?“ most people respond “Two“ despite knowing that noah rather than Moses was the biblical actor. Two experiments tested the role of processing fluency in the detection of such semantic distortions by presenting questions in an easy or difficult to read print font. As predicted, low processing fluency facilitated detection of th...

متن کامل

Here's looking at you: Visual similarity exacerbates the Moses illusion for semantically similar celebrities.

When people read questions like "How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the ark?", many mistakenly answer "2" despite knowing that Noah sailed the ark. This "Moses illusion" occurs when names share semantic features. Two experiments examined whether shared visual concepts (facial features) exacerbate Moses illusions for celebrity names. Questions contained an unrelated distractor name ...

متن کامل

Memory and the Moses illusion: failures to detect contradictions with stored knowledge yield negative memorial consequences.

Although contradictions with stored knowledge are common in daily life, people often fail to notice them. For example, in the Moses illusion, participants fail to notice errors in questions such as "How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?" despite later showing knowledge that the Biblical reference is to Noah, not Moses. We examined whether error prevalence affected participant...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • Memory

دوره 22 5  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2014