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Distinguishing the Impact of Age on Semantic and Nonsemantic Associations in Episodic Memory
- Source :
- Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, The Gerontological Society of America, 2021, 76 (4), pp.722-731. ⟨10.1093/geronb/gbaa010⟩
- Publication Year :
- 2019
-
Abstract
- Objectives Refreshing, or the act of briefly foregrounding recently presented but now perceptually absent representations, has been identified as a possible source of age differences in working memory and episodic memory. We investigated whether the refreshing deficit contributes to the well-known age-related deficit for retrieving nonsemantic associations, but has no impact on existing semantic associations. Method Younger and older adults judged the relatedness of stimulus word pairs (e.g., pink–blue or pink–cop) after repeating or refreshing one of the words. During a later source recognition memory test, participants determined whether each item recognized as old was presented on the left or right (nonsemantic source memory) and presented in a related or unrelated pair (semantic source memory). The data were analyzed using a hierarchical Bayesian implementation of a multinomial model of multidimensional source memory. Results Neither age group exhibited a refreshing benefit to nonsemantic or semantic source memory parameters. There was a large age difference in nonsemantic source memory, but no age difference in semantic source memory. Discussion The study suggests that the nature of the association is most important to episodic memory performance in older age, irrespective of refreshing, such that source memory is unimpaired for semantically meaningful information.
- Subjects :
- Male
Aging
Memory, Long-Term
Social Psychology
Memory, Episodic
Foregrounding
Word Association Tests
Stimulus (physiology)
050105 experimental psychology
[SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences
Association
03 medical and health sciences
Young Adult
0302 clinical medicine
Cognition
Semantic memory
Humans
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Multinomial model
Episodic memory
Aged
Age differences
Working memory
05 social sciences
Bayes Theorem
Semantics
Clinical Psychology
Memory, Short-Term
[SCCO.PSYC]Cognitive science/Psychology
Mental Recall
Recognition memory test
Female
Geriatrics and Gerontology
Psychology
Gerontology
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Cognitive psychology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 17585368 and 10795014
- Volume :
- 76
- Issue :
- 4
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....c09057a43696e6e243ab758ef6c0a5df