Aging and illusory correlation in judgments of co-occurrence.

Examined the influence of aging on illusory correlation in judgments of co-occurrence. Ten older (aged 60–76 yrs) and 10 younger (aged 17–29 yrs) Ss judged the probability of co-occurrence for events associated with preexisting expectancies after receiving nonsalient or salient information about the true probabilities of co-occurrence of the events. Results showed that when current information on event co-occurrence was not salient, preexisting expectancies strongly influenced the judgments of both younger and older Ss. However, when this information was salient, younger Ss' judgments reflected more accurate adjustment to the probabilistic relationships in the information than did older Ss' judgments. This age difference may be related to changes in memory processes that accompany increasing age and to differences in judgment processes necessitated by these changes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)