The current investigation explored the degree to which impairments in the ability to strategically retrieve object details, relative to declines in the availability of these details, contribute to elevated rates of lure false recognition with age. To this end, we assessed older and younger adults’ recognition memory performance in both Yes/No and Forced Choice test formats, on the basis that the simultaneous presentation of targets and foils in the Forced Choice test minimizes demands on strategic retrieval processes, enabling a more direct measure of the availability of object details (Guerin et al., 2012; Migo et al., 2009; Norman, 2010). The results of Experiment 1 revealed that age-related increases in false recognition were evident across test formats, implicating reductions in the availability of object details to increased false recognition among older adults. Experiment 2 assessed whether this factor alone could be driving false recognition across test formats, but found that age differences in Yes/No performance persisted even when performance in the Forced Choice test was matched across groups. Together, these results indicate that both impairments in strategic retrieval processes and reductions in the availability of object details contribute to elevated rates of false recognition with age.