week 3 memory Flashcards
Memory decline in old age
in general, the less perceptual support and the higher the time pressure, the more pronounced appears the measured decline of memory
normal memory decline in old age is often difficult to discriminate from dementia
different forms of memory have a differential need for cognitive resources
- memory decline differs for different types of memory system
short term and long term memory
short-term memory shows little decline with old age
priming shows no decline with age
semantic memory peaks 50-60 years and then declines
episodic memory shows the most pronounced cognitive decline with age
the dual-process view
recollection is a slow process that retrieved when and where something happened
familiarity is a fast process based on similarity, that represents a feeling-of-knowing
recollection shows a much more pronounced decline than familiarity
associative memory
episodic memory consists of objects and their relationships
item memory stays intact in old age
associations-deficit-hypothesis
young adults use more visualisation instead of literal item memory (meulenbroek et al 2010)
brain substrates for memory
retrieval: frontal lobes and thalamus. important for retrieval for both recollection and familiarity
recollection: medial temporal lobe (hippocampus)
familiarity: inferior temporal lobe (parahippocampus)
familiarity representations are also contained in neural networks in the neocortex
aspects of the episodic memory
source memory
- differences between younger and older adults are relatively minor (kausler, 1994)
- if deficits occur, they can point to pathological problems in the frontal lobe
memory for time
- larger age differenes when sorting events according to time
memory for frequencies
- no age differences
structure of autobiographical memory
the u-shaped trend in memory of own life events is called reminiscence bump
even alzheimer-patients show a relatively intact autobiographical memory and RB
Vivaciousness vs review
retired people are probably more bust with a life review that people in work
Fitzgerald (1988) argues that the vivaciousness of memory contributes to the U-shape of autobiographical memory across the life span
memory for positive vs negative life events
dependent variable was the number of psychotherapeutic sessions
younger people evaluated life events more often as traumatic
life review is biased towards positive experiences (bernsen + Rubin, 2002)
Prospective memory
refers to events in the future, which need to be held in memory because actions still need to be carried out (zeigarnik effect)
older adults show only similar performance compared to younger adults when they were in education for a long time
(Cherry + LeComte, 1999)
very busy people in mid life were more forgetful than pensioners
implicit memory
reflects learning without intention
tasks can be similarly constructed to priming tasks
tasks can be similar to grammar learning tasks
decline of memory in old age is much less pronounced for implicit memory than for explicit memory
discourse (text) memory
memory for extensive verbal material (not vocab etc)
- understanding of themes
- details
memory for spoken language can be impaired when older people suffer from hardness of hearing (wingfield et al. 2005)
Older adults found it more difficult than younger adults to remember a text that was not structured with correct punctuation at natural sentence bounderies (wingfield et al. 1995)
Perception of written language
when text contained patches of irrelevant text, 68 y os needed much more time than 18 y-os
young adults paid more attention to rare and novel information
meta memory
older adults evaluate their memory and retrieval ability often negatively
in most cases they just need more time (kausler, 1994)
efficient older adults (vehaeghen et al 2000):
- did not compare themselves with their abilities when they were younger, but compared themselves with their peers
- they used external memory aids and wrote a lot down
- they used internal memory aids like visual imagery
