scholarly journals Unbinding of contextual information: age differences and cultural effects

Author(s):  
Brenda Iok Wong

Age and cultural effects on memory for complex pictures were examined under an unbinding condition. Young and older Canadians and Chinese were tested in Toronto and Beijing respectively. At encoding, participants viewed semantically congruent or incongruent pictures. At recognition, they were asked to recognize the objects and backgrounds of these pictures in isolation. The results revealed effects of both age and culture on recognition performance. Older adults recognized more objects than young adults, whereas Canadians were better than Chinese in background recognition. There was also a trend for Canadian older adults to recognize more objects and backgrounds than the other groups of participants. Age and cultural differences in memory under unbinding were possibly due to group differences in information binding during encoding. Finally, it was found that images from congruent pictures were better recognized than those from incongruent pictures, suggesting that semantic relatedness of information improves recognition under unbinding.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda Iok Wong

Age and cultural effects on memory for complex pictures were examined under an unbinding condition. Young and older Canadians and Chinese were tested in Toronto and Beijing respectively. At encoding, participants viewed semantically congruent or incongruent pictures. At recognition, they were asked to recognize the objects and backgrounds of these pictures in isolation. The results revealed effects of both age and culture on recognition performance. Older adults recognized more objects than young adults, whereas Canadians were better than Chinese in background recognition. There was also a trend for Canadian older adults to recognize more objects and backgrounds than the other groups of participants. Age and cultural differences in memory under unbinding were possibly due to group differences in information binding during encoding. Finally, it was found that images from congruent pictures were better recognized than those from incongruent pictures, suggesting that semantic relatedness of information improves recognition under unbinding.


2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Margot J. van der Goot ◽  
Eva A. van Reijmersdal ◽  
Mariska Kleemans

AbstractThis article examines whether there are differences between older and younger adults in recall and liking of arousing television commercials. As hypothesized, the experiment demonstrated that older adults remembered brands and products in calm commercials better than in arousing commercials, and they also liked calm commercials more. In contrast, younger adults remembered brands and products in arousing commercials better and they liked these commercials more. In addition, (curvi)linear relationships showed that for older adults arousal deteriorates their recall and liking, whereas for younger adults arousal – up to a certain point – is beneficial. These findings strongly suggest that advertising effects found in younger samples are unlikely to be the same for older target groups. An important practical implication is that it currently seems wise to make commercials targeted towards older adults calm instead of arousing when the aim is to generate brand recall and liking.


1993 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
pp. 326-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia P. May ◽  
Lynn Hasher ◽  
Ellen R. Stoltzfus

Across two studies comparing younger and older adults, age differences in optimal performance periods were identified (Study 1), and then shown to be an important determinant of memory differences (Study 2). A norming study showed that while most younger adults were Evening or Neutral types, as determined by a standard questionnaire, the vast majority of older adults were Morning types. A second study compared the recognition performance of younger and older adults tested in the morning or in the late afternoon. Substantial age differences were found in the late afternoon, when younger but not older adults were at their optimal times. However, no age differences in memory performance were found in the morning, when older but not younger adults were at their peak period. Thus, synchrony between optimal performance periods and the time at which testing is conducted may well be a critical variable in determining group differences in intellectual performance, particularly between older and younger adults.


2003 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason T. Newsom ◽  
Holly G. Prigerson ◽  
Richard Schulz ◽  
Charles F. Reynolds

Many topics in aging research address questions about group differences in prediction. Such questions can be viewed in terms of interaction or moderator effects, and use of appropriate methods to test these hypotheses are necessary to arrive at accurate conclusions about age differences. This article discusses the conceptual, methodological, and statistical problems in one approach to investigating moderator hypotheses. The subgroup regression approach, in which separate regression analyses are conducted in two or more groups, is widely used in aging research to examine group differences in prediction, but the approach can lead to erroneous conclusions. The moderated regression approach, involving the test of a product term, is described and recommended as an a alternative approach. The question of whether social support has greater beneficial effects for younger or older adults is investigated in a study of 287 recently-bereaved adults ranging in age from 20 to 91. Using the subgroup approach, findings indicated that social support significantly predicted depressive symptoms among younger adults and did not significantly predict depressive symptoms among older adults. The moderated regression analysis, however, indicated no significant age differences in the effect of social support. These results clearly illustrate that the analysis strategy researchers choose may have important bearing on theory in aging research such as conclusions regarding the role of social support across the life span.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARGOT D. SULLIVAN ◽  
GREGORY J. POARCH ◽  
ELLEN BIALYSTOK

Proficient bilinguals demonstrate slower lexical retrieval than comparable monolinguals. The present study tested predictions from two main accounts of this effect, the frequency-lag and competition hypotheses. Both make the same prediction for bilinguals but differ for trilinguals and for age differences. 200 younger or older adults who were monolingual, bilingual, or trilingual performed a picture naming task in English that included high and low frequency words. Naming times were faster for high than for low frequency words and, in line with frequency-lag, group differences were larger for low than high frequency items. However, on all other measures, bilinguals and trilinguals performed equivalently, and lexical retrieval differences between language groups did not attenuate with age, consistent with the competition view.


1989 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda J. Anooshian ◽  
Susan L. Mammarella ◽  
Paula T. Hertel

We assessed knowledge of retrieval processes in young (25–35 years) and old adults (70–85 years). Both feeling-of-knowing judgments and retrieval monitoring were examined with a set of questions about recent news events. For answers that participants initially failed to recall, they rated their feeling-of-knowing as well as made predictions regarding the likelihood of recalling the answer with the aid of a specified type of retrieval cue (retrieval monitoring). Accuracy was evaluated in the context of later recall or recognition performance. We found age group differences in the accuracy of retrieval monitoring, free recall, and recall aided by phonological cues. Using a separate inventory, we found no evidence for age group differences in participants' knowledge of general retrieval principles.


GeroPsych ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara De Paula Couto ◽  
Ronja Ostermeier ◽  
Klaus Rothermund

Abstract. We examined the domain-specific views of young and old people held by young (18–30 years, n = 278) and older adults (60–85 years, n = 289) in Germany, the USA, and India. Views about old and young people differed between life domains but were mostly similar across age groups and countries. Older adults in the USA and Germany – but not in India – held slightly less negative views about old people than did young people in some domains, possibly indicating a projection of better-than-expected own aging experiences of older adults into their in-group stereotypes in Western countries. The findings of our study can be explained by socialization processes, supporting mostly a developmental perspective regarding the acquisition and endorsement of age stereotypes.


2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 557-571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurora G. Suengas ◽  
Trinidad Ruiz Gallego-Largo ◽  
Teresa Simón

Recognition performance does not usually change along the lifespan, but the response criterion usually does, and in general, it changes from being conservative during youth to being liberal, in old age. The focus of the present study is to analyze the changes that take place, both in discrimination and response criterion, as a result of aging in two recognition tasks: one with neutral images, and the other with faces showing positive and negative emotional expressions. Two groups of participants performed both tasks: young (N = 21; age range, 17-33 years), older (N = 21; age range, 65-91 years). The analyses of several discrimination parameters (d′ and probability of recognition) and the response criterion yielded significant age differences. Thus, results indicated that the ability to discriminate of older participants was better than that of younger participants when having to recognize neutral images, and faces with negative emotional expressions. The response criterion of younger participants was always conservative, whereas older participants only showed liberal criteria in front of faces with emotional expressions. In relation to the neutral images, the response criterion of older participants was optimum, because it led to more hits, without increasing the false alarms. The results are partially explained by the tasks differential difficulty, and are discussed within the frame of Simulation theory.


Author(s):  
D. Kristen Gilbert ◽  
Wendy A. Rogers

The purpose of this research was to determine if manipulating the order and type of practice would affect the outcome of training for both young and older adults. We examined age differences in performance on a paired-associates task in which type and order of practice were manipulated. Two versions of a noun-pair associates task were used; in the consistent mapping (CM) version the noun-pairs did not change from trial to trial; in the varied mapping version (VM) the noun-pairs changed from trial to trial. The CM task allowed the subjects to learn the noun-pairs whereas the VM task required that subjects always refer to a key in order to perform the task. Two groups of subjects were trained and the order in which they received the CM and VM versions was manipulated between groups. There were group differences in initial performance on the CM task for both young and older adults. The data indicate that having performed the task at all provided some benefit in terms of reaction time. The subjects were able to acquire the skill of performing the task in the first version they performed and this skill acquisition aided their subsequent performance. In addition, the benefits of prior practice were longer-lasting for older adults relative to young adults.


1999 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 494-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia A. Reuter-Lorenz ◽  
Louise Stanczak ◽  
Andrea C. Miller

Several neuroimaging studies have reported that older adults show weaker activations in some brain areas together with stronger activations in other areas, compared with younger adults performing the same task. This pattern may reflect neural recruitment that compensates for age-related neural declines. The recruitment hypothesis was tested in a visual laterality study that investigated age differences in the efficiency of bihemispheric processing. Letter-matching tasks of varying complexity were performed under two conditions: (a) matching letters projected to the same visual field (hemisphere) and (b) matching letters projected to opposite visual fields (hemispheres). As predicted by the recruitment hypothesis, older adults generally performed better in the bilateral than unilateral condition, whereas younger adults showed this pattern only for the most complex task. We discuss the relation between these results and neuroimaging evidence for recruitment, and the relevance of the present bihemispheric advantage to other evidence for age-related changes in interhemispheric transfer.


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