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 Cognitive aging and verbal labeling in continuous visual memory

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (7) ◽  
pp. 1196-1213
Author(s):  
Alicia Forsberg ◽  
Wendy Johnson ◽  
Robert H. Logie
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Age Related

Abstract The decline of working memory (WM) is a common feature of general cognitive decline, and visual and verbal WM capacity appear to decline at different rates with age. Visual material may be remembered via verbal codes or visual traces, or both. Souza and Skóra, Cognition, 166, 277–297 (2017) found that labeling boosted memory in younger adults by activating categorical visual long-term memory (LTM) knowledge. Here, we replicated this and tested whether it held in healthy older adults. We compared performance in silence, under instructed overt labeling (participants were asked to say color names out loud), and articulatory suppression (repeating irrelevant syllables to prevent labeling) in the delayed estimation paradigm. Overt labeling improved memory performance in both age groups. However, comparing the effect of overt labeling and suppression on the number of coarse, categorical representations in the two age groups suggested that older adults used verbal labels subvocally more than younger adults, when performing the task in silence. Older adults also appeared to benefit from labels differently than younger adults. In younger adults labeling appeared to improve visual, continuous memory, suggesting that labels activated visual LTM representations. However, for older adults, labels did not appear to enhance visual, continuous representations, but instead boosted memory via additional verbal (categorical) memory traces. These results challenged the assumption that visual memory paradigms measure the same cognitive ability in younger and older adults, and highlighted the importance of controlling differences in age-related strategic preferences in visual memory tasks.

Role of Emotion and Cognition on Age Differences in the Framing Effect

2017 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bingyan Pu ◽  
Huamao Peng ◽  
Shiyong Xia
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Emotional Arousal ◽  
Framing Effect ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Age Difference ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Life Saving

Framing effect studies indicate that individuals are risk averse for decisions framed as gains but risk-seeking for decisions framed as losses. Findings of age-related differences in susceptibility to framing are mixed. In the current study, we examined emotional arousal in two decision tasks (life saving vs. money gambling) to evaluate the effects of emotion on age differences in the framing effect. When cognitive abilities and styles were controlled, there was a framing effect in the younger group in the life-saving task, a high-emotional arousal task, while older adults did not display this classic framing effect pattern. They showed risk aversion in both positive and negative framing. Age differences existed in the framing effect. Conversely, younger and older adults in the money-gambling task both displayed the framing effect; there was no age difference. When the cognitive abilities were not controlled, the pattern of results in the high-emotional arousal task remained unchanged, while greater framing effects were found, from the perspective of effect size, for older than younger adults in the low-emotional arousal task. Limited cognitive resources would not hamper older adults’ performances when their emotional arousal was high. However, older adults with low-level emotional arousal were more susceptible than younger adults to framing because of declining cognitive capacities. This implied the importance of emotion in older adults’ decision making and supported the selective engagement hypothesis.

Sadness in older persons: 13-year follow-up of a community sample in Baltimore, Maryland

1999 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. J. GALLO ◽  
P. V. RABINS ◽  
J. C. ANTHONY
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Direct Effect ◽  
Community Sample ◽  
Cohort Effect ◽  
Measurement Model ◽  
Structural Equations ◽  
Community Dwelling ◽  
Age Difference ◽  
Younger Adults

Background. Our prior psychometric work suggested that older adults interviewed in 1981 in a community survey were less likely than younger adults to report dysphoria. We hypothesized that this would also be true of older adults interviewed 13 years later.Methods. This study is a population-based 13-year follow-up survey of community-dwelling adults living in East Baltimore in 1981. Subjects were the continuing participants of the Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area Program. After excluding 269 adults who were 65 years of age and older at initial interview in 1981, 1651 adults remained (347 aged 65 years and older and 1304 who were 30–64 years-old at follow-up).We applied structural equations with a measurement model for dichotomous data (the MIMIC – multiple indicators, multiple causes – model) to compare symptoms between adults who were 65 years and older at follow-up with younger adults, in relation to the nine symptom groups comprising the diagnostic criteria for major depression, adjusting for several potentially influential characteristics (namely, gender, self-reported ethnicity, educational attainment, cognitive impairment, marital status and employment).Results. Older adults were less likely to endorse sadness as evidenced by a direct effect coefficient of −0·335 (95% Confidence Interval −0·643, −0·027). After adjusting for several potentially influential characteristics, the direct effect of age was substantially unchanged (−0·298 (95% CI −0·602, −0·006)).Conclusions. Older adults in 1994, like older adults in 1981, were less likely to endorse sadness than younger persons. This finding suggests, but does not prove, that the observed age difference in reporting depression does not reflect a cohort effect.

Age Differences in Organization and Recall: An Analysis of Rehearsal Processes

1982 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 919-924 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. K. Jackson ◽  
H. G. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Age Differences ◽  
Direct Evidence ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Rehearsal Strategies ◽  
Effect Of Age

Organizational processing and free recall in younger (mean age = 18.0 yr.) and older (mean age = 71.9 yr.) adults were examined in an overt rehearsal procedure monitoring spontaneous rehearsal strategies. Subjects learned one of two equivalent lists of 18 unrelated nouns. Although a significant interaction of age × list was obtained in total recall, significant age differences in recall from long-term memory were associated with quality of rehearsal. No significant effect of age emerged in subjective organization or frequency of item rehearsal. Younger adults, recalling more, tended to rehearse in an active fashion by rehearsing the currently displayed item with several others. Results provide direct evidence that the elderly may suffer from a decrement in organizational processing in long-term memory with unstructured material, possibly stemming more from acquisition than retrieval-related mechanisms.

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 Age Differences in Engagement in Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Bill Protest: The Role of Self-Relevance

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 340-340
Author(s):  
Tze Kiu Wong ◽  
Dwight C K Tse ◽  
Nicole Long Ki Fung ◽  
Helene Fung
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Age Difference ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Perceived Relevance ◽  
Political Actions

Abstract Older adults were found to be less involved in non-institutional political actions than younger people did, and our previous work found that self-relevance mediated this age difference. In this study, we attempted to replicate the finding in a real-life social movement. We recruited 1037 participants (aged 18-84) during the anti-extradition bill movement in Hong Kong in September 2019. They responded to questions of how relevant and important the movement was to them, and whether they had taken part in a list of 8 political actions (e.g. signing petitions, joining rallies). Older adults indeed participated less in the movement compared with younger adults, and the age difference could partly be attributed to a lower perceived relevance of the movement. The finding suggested emphasizing on self-relevance as a potential way to promote political participation in older adults.

scholarly journals Older and younger adults’ hindsight bias after positive and negative outcomes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Groß ◽  
Ute J. Bayen
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Hindsight Bias ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Age Difference ◽  
General Knowledge ◽  
Positive Outcomes ◽  
Negative Outcomes ◽  
Younger Adults

AbstractAfter learning about facts or outcomes of events, people overestimate in hindsight what they knew in foresight. Prior research has shown that this hindsight bias is more pronounced in older than in younger adults. However, this robust finding is based primarily on a specific paradigm that requires generating and recalling numerical judgments to general knowledge questions that deal with emotionally neutral content. As older and younger adults tend to process positive and negative information differently, they might also show differences in hindsight bias after positive and negative outcomes. Furthermore, hindsight bias can manifest itself as a bias in memory for prior given judgments, but also as retrospective impressions of inevitability and foreseeability. Currently, there is no research on age differences in all three manifestations of hindsight bias. In this study, younger (N = 46, 18–30 years) and older adults (N = 45, 64–90 years) listened to everyday-life scenarios that ended positively or negatively, recalled the expectation they previously held about the outcome (to measure the memory component of hindsight bias), and rated each outcome’s foreseeability and inevitability. Compared with younger adults, older adults recalled their prior expectations as closer to the actual outcomes (i.e., they showed a larger memory component of hindsight bias), and this age difference was more pronounced for negative than for positive outcomes. Inevitability and foreseeability impressions, however, did not differ between the age groups. Thus, there are age differences in hindsight bias after positive and negative outcomes, but only with regard to memory for prior judgments.

scholarly journals Who Dares, Who Errs? Disentangling Cognitive and Motivational Roots of Age Differences in Decisions Under Risk

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 504-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thorsten Pachur ◽  
Rui Mata ◽  
Ralph Hertwig
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Decision Quality ◽  
Age Difference ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Decisions Under Risk ◽  
Decision Weights ◽  
Gain Loss ◽  
First Time

We separate for the first time the roles of cognitive and motivational factors in shaping age differences in decision making under risk. Younger and older adults completed gain, loss, and mixed-domain choice problems as well as measures of cognitive functioning and affect. The older adults’ decision quality was lower than the younger adults’ in the loss domain, and this age difference was attributable to the older adults’ lower cognitive abilities. In addition, the older adults chose the more risky option more often than the younger adults in the gain and mixed domains; this difference in risk aversion was attributable to less pronounced negative affect among the older adults. Computational modeling with a hierarchical Bayesian implementation of cumulative prospect theory revealed that the older adults had higher response noise and more optimistic decision weights for gains than did the younger adults. Moreover, the older adults showed no loss aversion, a finding that supports a positivity-focus (rather than a loss-prevention) view of motivational reorientation in older age.

Age differences in emotion perception

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 597-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew W. E. Murry ◽  
Derek M. Isaacowitz
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Emotion Perception ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Age Difference ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
Facial Emotion Perception

Older adults tend to have lower emotion-perception accuracy compared to younger adults. Previous studies have centered on individual characteristics, including cognitive decline and positive attentional preferences, as possible mechanisms underlying these age differences in emotion perception; however, thus far, no perceiver-focused factor has accounted for the age differences. The present study focuses on perceived social-context factors and uses the Social Input Model as the framework for investigating the relation between the expressivity of the social environment and emotion-perception accuracy in younger and older adults. Younger ( n = 32) and older adults ( n = 29) reported on the make-up of their social circles and the expressivity of their three closest social partners and then completed a static facial emotion-perception task. Older adults reported greater positive and negative expressivity in their social partners compared to younger adults. Moreover, older adults were marginally less accurate than younger adults when perceiving emotions. Positive expressivity of the social partners predicted lower emotion-perception accuracy in younger but not older adults. Our findings mark the first step to identifying possible characteristics of the social environment that may contribute to the age difference in emotion-perception accuracy.

Video Games and Emotion Regulation

GeroPsych ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 205-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn L. Ossenfort ◽  
Derek M. Isaacowitz
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Interactive Media ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Media Usage ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Media Preferences

Abstract. Research on age differences in media usage has shown that older adults are more likely than younger adults to select positive emotional content. Research on emotional aging has examined whether older adults also seek out positivity in the everyday situations they choose, resulting so far in mixed results. We investigated the emotional choices of different age groups using video games as a more interactive type of affect-laden stimuli. Participants made multiple selections from a group of positive and negative games. Results showed that older adults selected the more positive games, but also reported feeling worse after playing them. Results supplement the literature on positivity in situation selection as well as on older adults’ interactive media preferences.

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