8: Cognitive Abilities Across The Lifespan

Question 1

What are autobiographical memories?

Answer 1

Memories of our own lives that make up our own personal histories

Question 2

What is childhood amnesia?

Answer 2

Most people remember very little from before the age of 3

Question 3

What are some explanations for childhood amnesia?

Answer 3

Reduced recency
Freudian repression
Later development of the hippocampus
Later development of the coherant self which is needed for episodic memory

Question 4

What is the reminiscence bump?

Answer 4

An increase in memories between the ages of 15 and 30 with fewer memories over the age of 40

This effect only occurs for positive events

Question 5

Why is it difficult to study long term memory in infants?

Answer 5

They have limited language and motor responses as well as poor attention so it’s difficult to differentiate between conscious and unconscious reccolection

Question 6

Why do some argue that babies can’t have LTM before the age of 8 months?

Answer 6

Their hippocampus is not developed enough

Question 7

Why do some argue that babies can have LTM before the age of 8 months

Answer 7

They can associate stimuli that are generally presented together

Question 8

What is the mobile conjugate reinforcement task?

Answer 8

A ribbon is attatched to the babies foot and a mobile so every time they kick, the mobile moves

When it’s taken off, they still kick more to try and move it which shows that they remember the reaction it produced before

Question 9

What is deferred immitation?

Answer 9

Observing target actions and reproducing them after a delay

Question 10

What evidence is there that infants can form long term associations?

Answer 10

A pink rabbit and yellow duck were presented together.

3 target actions were modelled on the rabbit

After a delay, they were able to immitate the actions on the duck

Question 11

What is the verbal short term memory of 5 year olds?

Answer 11

4 items

Question 12

What is the verbal short term memory of 12 year olds

Answer 12

The same as adults

6/7 items

Question 13

What is the visual short term memory of 1 year olds?

Answer 13

4 items

Question 14

What is the link between working memory and age?

Answer 14

All 3 componants of the model improve with age

Question 15

What is the link between false memory and age?

Answer 15

In childhood, false memories increase due to improvements in gist memory

Question 16

What is gist memory?

Answer 16

We remember the gist of the sentance or the event, not the exact words

Question 17

What is implicit memory?

Answer 17

The unconscious priming and associations we make between items

Not associated with age

Question 18

What is the link between executive function and age?

Answer 18

Starts to develop around the age of 4 and doesn’t reach adult levels until around 20

Includes synaptic pruning, myelination and development of the prefrontal cortex

Question 19

How does selective attention develop?

Answer 19

It increases between the ages of 3 and 8

At age 3, when asked to learn the locations of target objects, they looked in every box. 8 year olds only looked in the relevent boxes

Question 20

How does planning change as we age?

Answer 20

Older children are able to do it more systematically

Question 21

What is the cohort effct?

Answer 21

Our experiances are most similar to those of a similar age. It might be that different groups have different experiances not because of age but because they grew up in a different society

Question 22

How does IQ change accross lifespan?

Answer 22

They remain stable

IQ at 11 is correlated with their IQ at 80

Question 23

What happens to episodic memory as we age?

Answer 23

It declines

Question 24

What memory systems do not change as we age?

Answer 24

Semantic and implicit memory systems

Question 25

At what age does our processing speed peak?

Answer 25

19

Question 26

At what age does our working memory peak?

Answer 26

30

Question 27

At what age does our vocabulary peak?

Answer 27

60

Question 28

How does brain volume change over time?

Answer 28

Lateral prefrontal cortex decreases across adulthood

Hippocampal volume is stable until 50 and then decreases

Question 29

How is cognition affected by alzheimers ?

Answer 29

Impaired memory, executive function, planning, language and perception

Question 30

How is brain volume affected by alzheimers?

Answer 30

It’s associated with reduced hippocampal volume

Frontal lobes are smaller