Lecture 2: Normal Cognitive Ageing: Memory

Question 1

Normal ageing effect on memory

Answer 1

• Deterioration in memory associated with ageing
• different effects ageing on different types and stages of memory
• stating that ageing affects memory is an oversimplification

Question 2

• Memory types: short-term

Answer 2

• Short term store
  
  • short term memory (primary memory)
    
    • e.g. digit span forward
• working memory
  
  • e.g. digit span backward, reading span

Question 3

• Memory types: long term memory

Answer 3

Question 4

Long term store

• categorisation

Answer 4

Question 5

Memory stages

Answer 5

Memory stages

• Encoding - formation of memory traces
• Storage - retaining the memory traces
• Retrieval - recovering the traces to become accessible to awareness again

Question 6

Short term store

• effects of ageing

Answer 6

• Short term memory: minor effects of age
• Working memory: age effect

Question 7

• Meta-analysis of verbal memory tasks based on 123 studies (Bopp & Verhaeghen, 2005; Handbook of Cognitive Aging, 2008)

Answer 7

Modest effect age in maintenance of material

• e.g. Digit span forward: age difference = 0.53
• On average younger adults recalled 0.53 items more than older adults
• Large effect age:
  
  • processing component added to maintenance of material - working memory
    
    • e.g. computation span or reading span tasks

Question 8

Working memory:

• negatively affected by ageing: computation span

Answer 8

Question 9

Working memory: negatively affected by ageing:

• reading span

Answer 9

• The tiger leapt to the ridge B
• I will never forget my days of combat K
• Andy was arrested for speeding N
• The mirror cast a strange reflection J
• Broccoli is a good source of nutrients S
• Answer: ?????

Question 10

Normal ageing effect on memory

• Meta-analysis of verbal memory tasks based on 123 studies (Bopp & Verhaeghen, 2005; Handbook of Cognitive Aging, 2008)

Answer 10

• Modest age effect maintenance of material (D)
• Large effect with added processing component (B)
  • (¨Large effect age - processing component added to maintenance - working memory
  • Average age difference = 1.54)

Question 11

Long term store:

• Episodic memory
  
  • Incidental vs. intentional learning.

Answer 11

• incidental: encoding/learning information without expecting memory test
• ¨Intentional: encoding/learning with knowledge that information will be required at a later time
  
  • e.g. trying to remember telephone number
• ¨Age effect larger intentional than incidental encoding

Question 12

Intentional vs incidental encoding

• Troyer et al. (2006): remembering names:

Answer 12

• physical processing (stating the first letter of the surname)
• phonemic processing (stating a word that rhymes with the name)
• semantic processing (creating an association with the name)
• intentional learning (trying to remember the name for a later test)
• Older adults only poorer in intentional learning condition (Learn)
• Effect level of processing in both groups

Question 13

Age effect intentional encoding:

Answer 13

• Older adults use less effective encoding strategies than younger adults
  
  • strategies not used spontaneously
• presenting encoding strategies (incidental conditions Troyer et al., 2006): smaller age effect

Question 14

¨Long-term memory:

• storage/retention
• • (Park et al., 1988)

Answer 14

• No consistent age effect,
  
  • but more evidence for faster forgetting in older adults, especially at longer intervals

Question 15

Long-term memory:

• retrieval

Answer 15

Availability of retrieval cues:

• free recall, no cues
• cued recall (incomplete cue, e.g. first letter)
• recognition (full cues, original stimuli)
• More cues - better retrieval for any age group
• Age effect largest with free recall, smallest with recognition
• Age difference larger with free recall than with recognition
• Age effect in cued recall larger than in recognition

Question 16

Long-term memory:

• retrieval (cued recall)

Answer 16

• Age effect in cued recall larger than in recognition
• Recall = cued recall.
• Cue = description presented when word was learned, e.g.
• body of water (cue) – pond (word to recall)
• (Craik & McDowd, 1987)

Question 17

Long-term memory:

• retrieval
• Age effect largest with free recall, smallest with recognition
• Explanations:

Answer 17

• Less self-initiated processing (if environmental support is weak) with ageing (Craik)
• Less controlled effortful processing with ageing (Hasher & Zacks)

Question 18

• Positivity effect:
• Surprise recognition test:
  
  • (Mather, 2012)

Answer 18

• Positivity effect: preference for positive information over negative information with ageing
• more positive words than negative words recalled
• (Reed et al. (2014). Meta-analysis of 115 studies)

Surprise recognition test:

• Surprise recognition test: advantage positive words in older adults

Question 19

Episodic memory

• source memory/memory for content

Answer 19

• Source of the content of memory: Where did you read about this interesting study? Who told you that joke?
• Source memory more impaired in older adults than memory for content

Question 20

Episodic memory – source memory/memory for context

• Source vs content
• Surprise recognition test:

Answer 20

• sentences read by one of four speakers while viewing the written sentence and a photograph of the speaker (Simons et al., 2004)
  
  • Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer.” True or false?

​​Source vs content:

• Source memory requires linking 2 forms of information (the message and who or what presented the message)
• Older adults more difficulty binding components of episode into a cohesive unit: age-related associative-deficit hypothesis

Surprise recognition test:

• Older adults = young adults to distinguish between old and new sentences (content)
• Older adults less able to identify the speaker of earlier presented sentences (source)

Question 21

Episodic memory:

• False Memory

Answer 21

• older adults more susceptible to false memories than younger adults
  
  • incorporating new materials into memory of the original event

Question 22

Episodic memory: false memory

• 3 types of word lists associated with (never presented) target words (Watson et al., 2001):

Answer 22

• 3 types of word lists associated with (never presented) target words (Watson et al., 2001):
  
  • Semantically related: chill, frost, ice, shiver
  • Phonologically related: told, fold, old, called
  • Hybrid: frost, fold, ice, hold

1. Name words from each list one by one
2. Recall as many words as possible from the list
   * Explanation increase false memories: reduced source memory

Question 23

Episodic memory

• remote memory

Answer 23

• Distribution of autobiographical memory
  
  • Childhood amnesia (before age 3-4)
  • Reminiscence bump: strongest and most vivid memories for events and experiences that occurred between the ages 10 and 30
  • Recency effect (last 10 years)

Picture: Participants (65 – 80 years). Retrieval cues (words or pictures), asked to retrieve an autobiographical memory evoked by each cue (Willander & Larsson, 2006)

Question 24

Episodic memory

• remote memory
  
  • Retrieval from remote memory – public events (remembering and knowing)
  • (Petrican et al., 2010)

Answer 24

• REMEMBER – episodic memory, remember personal experience associated with event, emotional response
  
  • Age effect – older adults remembered fewer events.
• KNOW – semantic knowledge, familiar with the event, without personal experience associated with that event
  
  • No overall effect of age

Picture: about remembering

Question 25

Semantic memory

• knowledge about the world in long term store

Answer 25

• Important difference with episodic memories: no specific time or place when memory was formed
  
  • when did you learn that this piece of fruit is an apple or that WW 1 started in 1914?.
  • Items in semantic memory you simply “know”, items in episodic memory you “remember” (remember the circumstances, personal experience)
• No strong effect ageing on semantic memory
  
  • Or normal ageing effect (much) smaller than for episodic memory

Question 26

Comparison development

• episodic v. semantic memory
  
  • 10 age groups, followed up after 5 years (Ronnlund et al,. 2005).

Answer 26

Episodic memory:

• fairly stable until age 55–60, followed by clear decline
  
  • Tasks: action and verbal recall and recognition

Semantic memory:

• improved until age 55, leveled off, weak decline beginning around 65
  
  • Tasks: general knowledge, vocabulary, word fluency

Question 27

Semantic memory

• No strong effect ageing on semantic memory
• except…:

Answer 27

• except: retrieval of words (infrequent words or proper names)
  
  • “tip of the tongue” - most common everyday memory complaint in healthy older adults (Ossher et al. 2013)
    
    • may also be problem with language production, the information is not lost.

Question 28

Prospective memory

• age effects:
• Uttl (2008):

Answer 28

• Remembering to do something in the future, e.g. buy cat food, pay a bill, go to appointment.
• Involves deliberate encoding and recollection.
• Mixed effects ageing
• Uttl (2008): mixed results due to failure to distinguish different subdomains of prospective memory

Question 29

Prospective memory

• Uttl (2008): mixed results due to failure to distinguish different subdomains of prospective memory:

Answer 29

• large age effects lab based prospective memory proper
• smaller age effect vigilance
• older adults perform better on habitual prospective memory

Question 30

• Procedural and implicit memory description

Answer 30

Procedural and implicit memory

• require no deliberate recollection or intention to remember
• implicit memory assessed indirectly through effect on another task

Question 31

Normal ageing effect on memory: Procedural memory

• perceptual-motor skill acquisition: mirror tracing: Age Effects
  
  • Baseline: 5 block of 5 trials each over 3 consecutive days
  • 5-year follow-up: 5 block of 5 trials each over 3 consecutive days

Answer 31

perceptual-motor skill acquisition – mirror tracing (Rodrigue et al., 2001)

• Older adults slower than younger adults
  
  • Increase in speed on successive trials
• Older adults make more errors than younger adults
  
  • Reduction in number of errors on successive trials
• Skill retained of 5-year interval in older and younger adults
  
  • Faster on first day follow-up than first day baseline (approx. 20% faster)
  • Fewer errors on first day follow-up than first day baseline

Question 32

Normal ageing effect on memory

• Implicit memory (age effects)

Answer 32

• Age effects on implicit tasks small or absent
  
  • Meta-analysis Light & La Voie (1993): small age-effect on implicit memory tasks (ES d = –0.18)
• Mitchell & Bruss (2003): similar levels priming in older and younger adults

Question 33

Implicit tests:

Answer 33

1. Word-fragment completion: presented with word fragment, “say first word that comes to mind that completes the fragment”
2. Word-stem completion: as above but longer fragments, easier to solve
3. Category-exemplar generation: presented with category name, say first 6 exemplars of that category than come to mind
4. Picture fragment identification: presented with picture fragment, say first word to identify the picture
5. Picture naming: name picture as quickly as possible

Question 34

Normal ageing effect on memory

• Priming (results)
  
  • participants named a list of pictures and words
  • Implicit memory: faster responses if intended word had been presented in initial naming task (target) versus words that had not appeared in initial naming task – priming effect
  • Compare priming effects in young (M = 20), middle-aged (M = 57.6) and old (M= 73.6) participants

Answer 34

Priming:

• No effect ageing on any of the implicit tasks
• Strong effect ageing in explicit (word recall) tasks

Question 35

Normal ageing effect on memory

In sum:

• Larger age effects:
• Smaller age effects

Answer 35

In sum:

• Larger age effects:
  
  • Working memory
  • Episodic memory
  • Prospective memory (proper)
• Smaller age effects:
  
  • Short term memory
  • Semantic memory
  • Prospective memory (habitual)
  • Implicit memory

Question 36

Explanations memory effects in normal ageing

• general cognitive deficits:

Answer 36

general cognitive deficits

• Poorer episodic memory performance consequence slower information processing
  
  • Controlling for information processing speed removed around 70% age related variance in episodic memory tasks (Salthouse, 1997)
• working memory: reduced WM capacity - encoding less effective - decline episodic memory tasks
• attention: attentional resources reduced – effect on explicit memory

Question 37

Explanations memory effects in normal ageing

• normal brain ageing

Answer 37

normal brain ageing

• Structural changes: volume reductions with ageing particularly pronounced in hippocampus and frontal cortex
  
  • Jernigan et al. (2001): normal MRI changes from 30 – 99 years, age-related losses in hippocampus.

Question 38

Explanations for memory deterioration in normal ageing

• other explanations
  
  • beliefs about memory:
  • health
  • “contamination” with abnormal ageing

Answer 38

• beliefs about memory: belief that memory will deteriorate with ageing
  
  • self-fulfilling prophecy
• health
  
  • depression, hypertension, heart disease and diabetes can affect memory
• “contamination” with abnormal ageing
  
  • Persons with preclinical dementia included
  • Implication: normal ageing effect memory overestimated