Chapter 13: Memory and Aging Flashcards
What are cross-sectional studies? Pros and cons?
Different groups of people are sampled across the age range, with each being tested once
Pros:
-No practice effects because no retesting
-Quicker and less expensive
-Lower dropout rate
Cons:
-Performances can’t be related to earlier/future data
-Cohort effect: people who are born at different times differ just because of when they were born
What are longitudinal studies? What are some advantages and disadvantages?
Representative sample of people tested repeatedly over time
Pros:
-Effect of age can be determined on an individual basis, helping to pinpoint precursors of disease
Cons:
-Expense
-Time consuming
-High dropout rate, often making the sample less representative
-Practice effects: participants get better at taking the same test with repeated testings
What happens to working memory as we age?
~Working memory span progressively declines with age, but it is a very small decline
-effects are larger when tasks involve speed of processing or episodic, long-term memory
~Seems to be due to attention, processing abilities, and cognitive load rather than actual memory deficits
Describe the inhibition deficit hypothesis of aging and a related study that used golf.
Hypothesis: a major cognitive effect of aging is the reduced capacity to inhibit irrelevant stimuli
Participants: older and younger mini golf players, matched for skillz
Task: make golf shots in practice and in competition
Results: concentration increased in the younger under competition conditions and performance was maintained, in contrast to decline in performance in elderly
-however, large individual differences
Conclusion: older adults are less able to shut out potential distractors
Describe a study with chess that shows the elderly may have attentional deficits.
~Younger chess players scan more possible moves
~Older chess players scan fewer moves but in greater depth
-So, consider more future moves for each move
-May reflect increased difficulty keeping track of multiple sources of information
-Because they’re looking farther out, may be more difficult to look at many moves
How is dual-task performance in the elderly?
Dual-task performance is worse in elderly than on the two separate tasks
- Greater deficit when older
- Probably reflects general difficulty handling heavy cognitive loads
- When tasks are made easier, dual-task performance is not affected by age
What are some modulating factors of the decline in episodic memory?
~Processing capacity of learning
-Elderly take longer to perceive and process materials
-Elderly less likely to develop and use complex learning strategies
~Level of environmental support provided during retrieval
-Age effects are largest in tests lacking external cues (free recall)
What’s the associative deficit hypothesis of aging?
~Hypothesis: the differences between young and old is attributable to basic learning capacity, rather than to attentional or strategic differences
-Age-related difficulty in binding together unrelated thingz
What’s the self-performed task effect?
Age effects are minimized by asking elderly to perform an action associated with the to-be-remembered item
-Deepens encoding, providing auditory, visual, manual, and self-related cues for the memory
How does the level of environmental support at retrieval affect memory success in the elderly? How can we explain the differences?
~Age effects clearest in recall tests (no external cues), while recognition tends to be relatively preserved
~Difference may reflect a combination of:
-fewer retrieval cues in recall
-greater involvement of association in free recall
Describe how the nature of the task determines if recognition is impaired.
~If familiarity is sufficient, no deficit
-Able to recognize an item is familiar without being able to recall context
-Relatively spared in elderly
~If recollection is necessary, deficit
-Involves remembering the event in its context
-Declines substantially with age
-Does not represent a difference in confidence between young and old
Consistent with associative deficit hypothesis
How do the elderly perform on prospective memory tasks in the laboratory?
Test: participants perform an ongoing task and respond either after a specified time or after a cue occurs
Results: age related decrement for both
What does prospective memory require?
~Encoding action to be performed
~Encoding the time when it should be performed
~Maintaining the two pieces of information over a delay
-Esp difficult IRL with divided attention
-Through rehearsal and/or periodic retrieval from LTM
~Actually performing the task when the time comes
How do they elderly perform in prospective memory tests IRL? What’s the rationale?
~Unlike laboratory studies, IRL prospective memory scenarios the elderly often perform better than younger adults
Rationale:
~Older people more aware of their memory limitations and compensate with various strategies
~Older people live more ordered and structured lives, making it easier to form plans
~Older people may have been more motivated to perform well on a memory task
-Younger people can explain memory slips by “being too busy”
How does semantic memory change with age?
~Does not decline
- Actually expands in some areas (vocab, historical facts) - Speed of access (more sensitive measure) does decline
