Ageing affects conceptual but not perceptual memory processes (original) (raw)

Age effects in cued recall: Sources from implicit and explicit memory

Psychology and Aging, 1995

In 2 experiments, young and old adults were compared on cued recall using direct and indirect test instructions. Participants studied words under an incidental orienting task of rating each word for concreteness. Test cues were meaningfully related to the targets, and participants used them either to recall the studied word (direct test) or to generate a related word (indirect test). Target words and test cues varied in the number of associates linked to them prior to the laboratory experience, and effects of the size of the sets of associates were used as indicators of implicit memory search. Age differences were observed in the effects of target and cue set size as well as in the effects of type of test instruction. Older adults perform less well than younger adults on laboratory tests of memory, such as cued recall or recognition, that explicitly require the deliberate recall of recently experienced stimuli. The age difference is less apparent on memory tasks that test for implicit evidence of the recent experience without requiring deliberate recall, such as perceptual identification and lexical decision. These two categories of tasks are referred to, respectively, as tests of explicit and implicit memory (see Light, 1991, for review) or as direct and indirect measures of memory (Richardson-Klavehn & Bjork, 1988). Indirect tests of memory have been of interest to psychologists studying cognitive aging because the tests seem to suggest the existence of memory structures or memory processes that are relatively well preserved throughout the adult years. Several mechanisms have been proffered to explain implicit memory performance, including the possibility that implicit tasks involve the activation of preexisting knowledge (Graf & Mandler, 1984), which may be unaffected by age. This explanation is compatible with findings from lexical decision and other tasks that suggest relatively intact semantic networks for older adults (

Age effects on explicit and implicit memory

Frontiers in Psychology, 2013

It is well-documented that explicit memory (e.g., recognition) declines with age. In contrast, many argue that implicit memory (e.g., priming) is preserved in healthy aging. For example, priming on tasks such as perceptual identification is often not statistically different in groups of young and older adults. Such observations are commonly taken as evidence for distinct explicit and implicit learning/memory systems. In this article we discuss several lines of evidence that challenge this view. We describe how patterns of differential age-related decline may arise from differences in the ways in which the two forms of memory are commonly measured, and review recent research suggesting that under improved measurement methods, implicit memory is not age-invariant. Formal computational models are of considerable utility in revealing the nature of underlying systems. We report the results of applying single and multiple-systems models to data on age effects in implicit and explicit memory. Model comparison clearly favors the single-system view. Implications for the memory systems debate are discussed.

A processing resource account of age differences in recall

Canadian Journal of Psychology / Revue canadienne de psychologie, 1982

It is hypothesized that age deficits in recall are due to a reduction in available processing resource. It is argued that the formation of a distinct encoding in which unique aspects of the context are integrated with the target item requires a substantial amount of attentional resource, but that the core semantic features of words are encoded relatively automatically. Thus, under conditions of reduced processing resource, a general, stereotyped encoding will result. The effectiveness of general, categorical retrieval cues was compared to the effectiveness of contextually specific retrieval cues in three experiments. Young adults recalled more than old adults when they were cued with specific retrieval cues, but no age differences were observed when general retrieval cues were used. A similar pattern of results was obtained when the amount of processing resource was experimentally reduced by requiring young adults to perform a concurrent task during encoding. Many recent views of human memory have been couched in terms of encoding processes, retrieval processes, and their interrelations. Within such a

A Double Dissociation of Implicit and Explicit Memory in Younger and Older Adults

Psychological Science, 2011

This study examined whether age-related differences in cognition influence later memory for irrelevant, or distracting, information. In Experiments 1 and 2, older adults had greater implicit memory for irrelevant information than younger adults did. When explicit memory was assessed, however, the pattern of results reversed: Younger adults performed better than older adults on an explicit memory test for the previously irrelevant information, and older adults performed less well than they had on the implicit test. Experiment 3 investigated whether this differential pattern was attributable to an age-related decline in encoding resources, by reducing the encoding resources of younger adults with a secondary task; their performance perfectly simulated the pattern shown by the older adults in the first two experiments. Both older and younger adults may remember irrelevant information, but they remember it in different ways because of age-related changes in how information is processed ...

Age differences in recollection: three patterns of enhanced encoding

Psychology and aging, 2007

Memory encoding conditions can be manipulated in a variety of ways, and many of these methods result in improved recollection for both younger and older adults relative to baseline conditions. Previous results have shown differential age-related patterns of improvement, however, with some manipulations giving equal improvement to young and old participants, some benefiting older adults more, and others benefiting younger adults more. In 2 experiments, the authors show that presenting pictures with words benefited older more than younger participants, word generation benefited both groups equally, and an encoding condition requiring novel integrative processing benefited younger more than older adults. The authors discuss these results in terms of the enhanced elaboration afforded and processing demanded by differential combinations of age groups and encoding conditions.

Age-related improvements in a conceptual implicit memory test

Memory & Cognition, 2003

The present study investigated developmental improvements in category exemplar generation priming in children from kindergarten to older elementary school age. The strength of categorical links for atypical exemplars increases in this age range, whereas category knowledge for typical exemplars remains relatively stable. Therefore, in comparison with older children, younger children should show less categorical-relational encoding and, thus, less priming for atypical items but not for typical items. This expectation was confirmed in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, picture versus word format at study dissociated implicit and explicit performance, indicating that the age-related increase in priming for atypical exemplars in Experiment 1 was not an artifact of explicit contamination. The findings suggest that developmental improvements in conceptual priming can be observed when the conceptual knowledge relevant for a given task improves over the age range tested.

Explicit and Implicit Memory Loss in Aging

International Journal of Psychological Studies

How our memory is affected as we age has been given considerable attention over recent decades as we strive to understand the cognitive processes involved. Memory types have been identified as either explicit (declarative - related to episodes or semantics) or implicit (non-declarative – related to procedures, habits, or earlier priming). Studies have identified likely age-related decline in explicit but not implicit memory though there are opposing results suggested from other studies. It is thought cognitive reserve capacities might explain any non-decline as aging individuals use alternative or additional pathways to ‘remember’. This theory might be supported indirectly if older members remember material accurately but take longer to supply answers. In our current study we re-examined whether age-related differences in accuracy and speed of access in memory are present in both implicit and explicit memory processes and we increased the number of experimental age groups (from 2 to...

Implicit processing in the cued recall of young and old adults

Psychology and Aging, 1992

Two cued recall experiments were reported in which younger and older subjects studied target words varying in number of preexperimental associates. In Experiment 1, targets were studied in either the absence or presence of meaning-related context cues, with recall always prompted by the cues. In the absence of context, words with smaller sets of associates were easier to recall than those with larger sets, but this effect was reduced for older subjects. The presence of a study context cue facilitated recall and eliminated the effect of associative set size for both ages. In Experiment 2, targets were studied and tested in the presence of unrelated words. In this situation, words with smaller sets of associates were less likely to be recalled than words with larger sets; again the effect was reduced for older subjects. The results are interpreted as an age decrement in processing implicitly activated information.

Aging, encoding specificity, and memory change in the Double Memory Test

Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 1995

Aged and young adults were tested by category cued recall after learning with category cues (CCR) or with item cues (ICR). CCR was about twice ICR for both aged and young adults. The aged recalled less than the young and did not benefit as much from greater encoding specificity and deeper processing in CCR. ICR and CCR were correlated, so that expected CCR can be predicted from ICR. The regression of CCR on ICR was linear for young adults, but was piecewise linear for the aged, showing that the relationship between ICR and CCR was not uniform for the aged adults. Lower than expected CCR by a subset of aged without clinical dementia may be a sign of preclinical dementia. (JINS, 1995, /, 483-493.)

Memory changes in healthy young and older adults

The Oxford handbook of …, 2000

The present chapter provides a review of the literature addressing changes in memory performance in older adults (often retired individuals with an age between 60 and 80 years), compared to younger adults (often college students around age 20). While it is well-established that memory performance declines in older adults (e.g., Kausler, 1994;, it is now clear that not all aspects of memory are impaired (e.