scholarly journals Does limited working-memory capacity underlie age differences in associative long-term memory?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lea Maria Bartsch ◽  
Vanessa Maria Loaiza ◽  
Klaus Oberauer
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Presentation Rate ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Adult Age ◽  
Set Size ◽  
Associative Deficit

Past research has consistently shown that episodic memory (EM) declines with adult age and, according to the associative-deficit hypothesis, the locus of this decline is binding difficulties. We investigated the importance of establishing and maintaining bindings in working memory (WM) for age differences in associative EM. In Experiment 1 we adapted the presentation rate of word pairs for each participant to achieve 67% correct responses during a WM test of bindings in young and older adults. EM for the pairs was tested thereafter in the same way as WM. Equating WM for bindings between young and older adults reduced, but did not fully eliminate, the associative EM deficit in the older adults. In Experiment 2 we varied the set size of word pairs in a WM test, retaining the mean presentation rates for each age group from Experiment 1. If a WM deficit at encoding causes the EM deficit in older adults, both WM and EM performance should decrease with increasing set size. Against this prediction, increasing set size did not affect EM. We conclude that reduced WM capacity does not cause the EM deficit of older adults. Rather, both WM and EM deficits are reflections of a common cause, which can be compensated for by longer encoding time.

scholarly journals Adult age differences in refreshing and elaboration and their consequences for working memory and long-term memory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lea Maria Bartsch ◽  
Klaus Oberauer
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Adult Age ◽  
Adult Age Differences

Older adults show a pronounced decline in long-term memory (LTM), but the source of this deficit is still debated. The present study investigated whether deficient engagement in refreshing and elaboration at the level of working memory (WM) causes this deficit. Our results show that the benefit of refreshing in WM was unaffected by age. Refreshing had no effect on LTM in both young and older adults. Elaboration benefited LTM in young adults, but not in older adults. Therefore, the LTM deficit of older adults might arise at least in part from a deficit in the process of elaboration.

scholarly journals Does limited working memory capacity underlie age differences in associative long-term memory?

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lea M. Bartsch ◽  
Vanessa M. Loaiza ◽  
Klaus Oberauer
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Term Memory

scholarly journals Adult age differences in the effects of processing on storage in working memory: A meta-analysis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka J Jaroslawska ◽  
Stephen Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Effect Sizes ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Adult Age ◽  
Age Related

Normal adult aging is known to be associated with lower performance on tasks assessing the short-term storage of information. However, whether or not there are additional age-related deficits associated with concurrent storage and processing demands within working memory remains unclear. Methodological differences across studies are considered critical factors responsible for the variability in the magnitude of the reported age effects. Here we synthesized comparisons of younger and older adults' performance on tasks measuring storage alone against those combining storage with concurrent processing of information. We also considered the influence of task-related moderator variables. Meta-analysis of effect sizes revealed a small but disproportionate effect of processing on older adults' memory performance. Moderator analysis indicated that equating single task storage performance across age groups (titration) and the nature of the stimulus material were important determinants of memory accuracy. Titration of storage task difficulty was found to lead to smaller, and non-significant, age-differences in dual task costs. These results were corroborated by supplementary Brinley and state-trace analyses. We discuss these findings in relation to the extant literature and current working memory theory as well as possibilities for future research to address the residual heterogeneity in effect sizes.

Adult age differences in working memory.

1989 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 500-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen R. Dobbs ◽  
Brendan Gail Rule
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Adult Age ◽  
Adult Age Differences

051 Is Working Memory Associated with Ag- related Emotional Memory Bias?

SLEEP ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (Supplement_2) ◽  
pp. A21-A22
Author(s):  
Negin Sattari ◽  
Lauren Whitehurst ◽  
Sara Mednick
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Emotional Reactivity ◽  
Emotional Memory ◽  
Negative Word ◽  
Memory Bias ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Sleep Condition ◽  
Valence And Arousal ◽  
Positive Memories

Abstract Introduction Aging is accompanied by deterioration in both working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM), though the reason is not well understood. Sleep may play a role in young adults, but the findings in older adults are not as clear. In addition, older adults show better memory for positive memories, whereas youngers tend to hold on to negative memories. The prefrontal cortex has been implicated in this emotional memory bias. The current study investigated the role of working memory (a prefrontal task) on emotional memory consolidation across sleep and wake in young and older adults. Methods In the morning, 93 younger (18–39) and 121 older (60–85) adults took a WM task and encoded neutral or negative word pairs, and gave valence and arousal ratings for each pair. After a wake or polysomnography-recorded sleep condition, memory for the word pairs was tested plus valence and arousal ratings. Results Youngers had better overall memory (p<.001), with older adults showing better memory for neutral compared to negative word pairs (p=.04), as well as increased positivity (p=.02), which was correlated with LTM performance (p=.009). In contrast, youngers performed better on the negative word pairs (p=.01), but no change in ratings and no association between emotional reactivity and LTM. Further, WM was positively related to memory in youngers (r=.38, p=.02), but not in older adults. Lastly, no role for sleep likely due to the lack of an immediate test. Conclusion we found that the positivity bias in aging in both memory and valence, with increasing positivity associated with better memory. We found a robust relation between WM and LTM in youngers but not older adults. Our findings are consistent with the socioemotional-selectivity theory that posits that aging is associated with a relative suppression of negative information while WM may play a role. Support (if any):

scholarly journals Age differences in the precision of memory at short and long delays

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Rhodes ◽  
Emily E Abenne ◽  
Ashley M Meierhofer ◽  
Moshe Naveh-Benjamin
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Age Difference ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Recall Error ◽  
Successful Recall ◽  
Error Distance

Age differences are well established for many memory tasks assessing both short-term and long-term memory. However, how age differences in performance vary with increasing delay between study and test is less clear. Here we report two experiments in which participants studied a continuous sequence of object-location pairings. Test events were intermixed such that participants were asked to recall the precise location of an object following a variable delay. Older adults exhibit a greater degree of error (distance between studied and recalled locations) relative to younger adults at short (0-2 intervening events) and longer delays (10-25 intervening events). Mixture modeling of the distribution of recall error suggests that older adults do not fail to recall information at a significantly higher rate than younger adults. Instead, what they do recall appears to be less precise. Follow up analyses demonstrate that this age difference emerges following only one or two intervening events between study and test. These findings are consistent with the suggestion that aging does not greatly impair recall from the focus of attention but age differences emerge once information is displaced from this highly accessible state. Further, we suggest that age differences in the precision of memory, but not the probability of successful recall, may be due to the use of more gist-like representations in this task.

scholarly journals Adult age differences in subjective responses to dynamic socioemotional incentives

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sade J Abiodun ◽  
Galen McAllister ◽  
Gregory Russell Samanez-Larkin ◽  
Kendra Leigh Seaman
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Incentive Motivation ◽  
Social Signals ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Adult Age ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Adult Age Differences

Facial expressions are powerful communicative social signals that motivate feelings and action in the observer. However, research on incentive motivation has overwhelmingly focused on money and points and the limited research on social incentives has been mostly focused on responses in young adulthood. Previous research on the age-related positivity effect and adult age differences in social motivation suggest that older adults might experience higher levels of positive arousal to socioemotional stimuli than younger adults. Affect ratings following dynamic emotional expressions (anger, happiness, sadness) varying in magnitude of expression showed that higher magnitude expressions elicited higher arousal and valence ratings. Older adults did not differ significantly in levels of arousal when compared to younger adults, however their ratings of emotional valence were significantly higher as the magnitude of expressions increased. The findings provide novel evidence that socioemotional incentives may be relatively more reinforcing as adults age. More generally, these dynamic socioemotional stimuli that vary in magnitude are ideal for future studies of more naturalistic affect elicitation, studies of social incentive processing, and use in incentive-driven choice tasks.

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