Center Director Denise Park testified on July 27th before the Senate Special Committee on Aging. The topic of her testimony was "Consumer Fraud and the Aging Mind." Dr. Park pointed out to ranking Senators Smith and Kohl that: 1. Some older adults have a reduced capacity to remember and process new information, which makes them more susceptible to clever scams. 2. Older adults tend to pay more attention to positive rather than negative information, which can lead some to put trust in untrustworthy individuals. 3. Older adults tend to remember the gist of a message and forget the source. They may remember reading an article about a new wonder-drug, and forget that they read about it in a tabloid.
Remembering What Isn't So. Dr. Park and former student Ian Skurnik have shown that older adults have a greater tendency to remember false information as true, because they remember the gist of a message and forget the details. Their work was recently featured in the New York Times.
And in local news... Dr. Park's work on memory for false information as it applies to consumer fraud was featured in the Feb. 8th Champaign-Urbana News Gazette.