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Abstract
The illusory truth effect, which states that repeated statements are perceived as more truthful than new statements, is well-documented. Context reinstatement, or aligning environmental contexts during encoding and retrieval, is known to enhance memory but also create false memories (Doss et al., 2018). While the relationship between the illusory truth effect and other factors (e.g. time interval, cognitive abilities, etc.) has been examined, there is no existing literature on the impact of context on the illusory truth effect. In addition, although studies have found that, in general, younger and older adults are equally susceptible to implicit fluency (Thapar & Westerman, 2009), a prior study discovered that when older adults have knowledge about the topic, they are able to make judgments based on knowledge and resist the repetition-induced fluency effect (Brashier et al., 2017). The present study examines whether context reinstatement affects the illusory truth effect and explores age-related differences in this interaction. Data from our online sample of younger and older adults replicates the illusory truth effect and reveals that people were more susceptible to the effect when they were reading false claims as opposed to true statements. Contrary to the Brashier et al. (2017) finding, our research demonstrates that older adults and younger adults were equally susceptible to the illusory truth effect regardless of prior knowledge of the statements. Moreover, reinstating context did not boost the illusory truth effect. Whether context-induced fluency only functions in the domain of memory judgments needs further scrutiny.