Repetition priming of nonwords in young and older adults.

In 3 experiments, a pronunciation task was used to examine repetition priming of novel nonwords in young and older adults. The contributions of item and associative priming to the total repetition priming effect were assessed. In Experiment 1, age consistency was found in both components of repetition priming after 9 repetitions of nonwords. Experiment 2 established that young and older adults were similar in item and associative priming after as few as 2 repetitions of nonwords. Finally, Experiment 3 demonstrated that associative priming persists for at least 3 min and that it is dissociable from cued recall. The overall pattern of results strongly argues that elaborative processing is not necessary to obtain associative priming in indirect memory tasks and that young and older adults show similar magnitudes of associative priming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic priming during sentence processing by young and older adults.

Examined semantic processing of sentences by 30 younger (mean age 25.1 yrs) and 30 older (mean age 68.5 yrs) adults, using a priming technique. Ss read a sentence and then made a lexical decision about a target presented immediately after the sentence. For both age groups, word targets that were instruments implied by the action of the sentence had faster latencies than unrelated word targets. There was no evidence of inhibition of unrelated targets, suggesting that the facilitation of instrument targets involved automatic processes. Results provide no evidence for age-related changes in semantic processing of sentences, including access to implied information. Older Ss did, however, have poorer memory for the sentences on a recognition test. It is suggested that previous findings by G. Cohen (see PA, Vols 63:747 and 67:958) of age deficits in comprehension may depend on techniques that measure what is remembered rather than what is understood. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of repetition on associative recognition in young and older adults: Item and associative strengthening.

Young and older adults studied word pairs and later discriminated studied pairs from various types of foils including recombined word-pairs and foil pairs containing one or two previously unstudied words. We manipulated how many times a specific word pair was repeated (1 or 5) and how many different words were associated with a given word (1 or 5) to tease apart the effects of item familiarity from recollection of the association. Rather than making simple old/new judgments, subjects chose one of five responses: (a) Old-Old (original), (b) Old-Old (rearranged), (c) Old-New, (d) New-Old, (e) New-New. Veridical recollection was impaired in old age in all memory conditions. There was evidence for a higher rate of false recollection of rearranged pairs following exact repetition of study pairs in older but not younger adults. In contrast, older adults were not more susceptible to interference than young adults when one or both words of the pair had multiple competing associates. Older adults were just as able as young adults to use item familiarity to recognize which word of a foil was old. This pattern suggests that recollection problems in advanced age are because of a deficit in older adults' formation or retrieval of new associations in memory. A modeling simulation provided good fits to these data and offers a mechanistic explanation based on an age-related reduction of working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Characteristics of associative learning in younger and older adults: Evidence from an episodic priming paradigm.

Two experiments investigated age differences in the encoding of associative information during a speeded naming task. In both experiments, semantically unrelated prime-target word pairs were presented 4 times, in either massed or spaced fashion, during the learning phase. An immediate or delayed test trial was presented following the fourth presentation. In Experiment 1, participants named both the primes and the targets. Younger and older adults showed similar benefits when naming targets that were part of a consistent prime-target pairing compared with targets presented with different primes at each presentation. In Experiment 2, participants named only the target word. Younger adults showed a benefit for consistently paired words, whereas older adults showed no benefit for consistently paired words. The results of the test trials showed a greater benefit for massed repeated words than for spaced repeated words at the immediate test and a reversed pattern at the delayed test. This spacing by test delay interaction was evident in response latency in Experiment 1 and in cued recall performance in Experiment 2. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

One-trial associative memory in black-capped chickadees.

Black-capped chickadees (Parus atricapillus), birds that store food, inspected feeders in an aviary (1 of which was baited) and returned after a 5-min retention interval to consume the then-hidden food. In Exp 1, Ss quickly learned this task but only if different feeders were used on each trial. In Exp 2, memory for the baited feeder decayed substantially after 24 hrs but not after 30 min. In Exps 3 and 4, there were 4 alternatives to the baited feeder. Ss performed better than chance from the beginning of these experiments. When Ss made errors on their 1st choice, Ss performed better than chance on their 2nd choice. Exp 4 tested the notion that increasing the cost of inspecting the feeders would reduce errors; however, this did not improve performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological priming effects on word retrieval and tip-of-the-tongue experiences in young and older adults.

In a repetition priming paradigm, young and older participants read aloud prime words that sometimes shared phonological components with a target word that answered a general knowledge question. In Experiment 1, prior processing of phonologically related words decreased tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) and increased correct responses to subsequent questions. In Experiment 2, the priming task occurred only when the participant could not answer the question. Processing phonologically related words increased correct recall, but only when the participant was in a TOT state. Phonological priming effects were age invariant, although older adults produced relatively more TOTs. Results support the transmission deficit model that the weak connections among phonological representations that cause TOTs are strengthened by production of phonologically related words. There was no evidence that phonologically related words block TOT targets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic and attentional priming in young and older adults: Reevaluation of the two-process model.

Three experiments addressed the distinction between automatic and attentional mechanisms underlying semantic priming effects by factorially crossing prime–target relatedness, expectancy, and stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) in a task (pronunciation) that minimized postlexical checking processes. Also, possible age-related (young vs older adults) differences in the automatic and attentional mechanisms were addressed. Across all experiments there was evidence of a Relatedness?×?Expectancy?×?SOA interaction, which is inconsistent with the notion of independent automatic and attentional mechanisms in semantic priming and the notion of a self-incapsulated modular lexicon. The results also indicated age-related differences in the build-up of the expectancy effect across SOAs when the prime was visually available for only 200 msec, independently of the prime–target SOA (Exp 1 and 3), but not when the prime was visually available throughout the SOA (Exp 2). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual priming of proper names in young and older normal adults and a patient with prosopanomia.

The purpose of this study was to determine if normal participants and a patient with prosopanomia can be perceptually primed for proper names. To this end, 2 experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, normative data were collected on 4 proper-name priming tasks. The variables of levels of processing at encoding and age were manipulated. Robust priming results were obtained that were not influenced by either of these variables. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that prosopanomic patient, N.G., demonstrated normal repetition priming, despite her marked impairment in deliberate retrieval of person and city names. These results are interpreted in terms of a dissociation between explicit and implicit memory for proper names and suggest that the deficit in prosopanomia only involves deliberate access to the name; access to presemantic representations of the visual word form remains intact. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic priming in young and older adults: Evidence for age constancy in automatic and attentional processes.

Automatic and attentional components of semantic priming and the relation of each to episodic memory were evaluated in young and older adults. Category names served as prime words, and the relatedness of the prime to a subsequent lexical decision target was varied orthogonally with whether the target category was expected or unexpected. At a prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) of 410 ms, target words in the same category had faster lexical decision latencies than did different category targets. This effect was not significant at a 1,550-ms SOA and was attributed to automatic processes. Expected category targets had faster latencies than unexpected category targets at the 410-ms SOA, and the magnitude of the effect increased at the 1,550-ms SOA. This effect was attributed to attentional processes. These patterns of priming were obtained for both age groups, but in a surprise memory test older adults had poorer recall of primes and targets. We discuss the implications of these results for the hypothesis that older adults suffer deficits in selective attention and for the related hypothesis that attentional deficits impair semantic processing, which causes memory decrements in old age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sustained-attention capacity in young and older adults.

The sustained-attention capacity of young (21–29 years) and older (65–78 years) adults was examined using a high-event rate digit-discrimination vigilance task presented at 3 levels of stimulus degradation. Increased stimulus degradation led to a reduction in the hit rate and to a greater decline in hit rate over blocks (increased vigilance decrement). Sensitivity (d') declined over blocks only at the highest level of stimulus degradation. Older adults had a lower hit rate and showed greater vigilance decrement than young adults, particularly when stimuli were highly degraded. However, both age groups showed the same pattern of stability in sensitivity when stimulus degradation was moderate, and sensitivity decrement over time when stimulus degradation was high. The results suggest that the process of sustained allocation of capacity—as reflected in temporal changes in sensitivity—operates similarly in young and older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related associative deficits are absent with nonwords.

Words and nonwords were used as stimuli to assess item and associative recognition memory performance in young and older adults. Participants were presented with pairs of items and then tested on both item memory (old/new items) and associative memory (intact/recombined pairs). For words, older participants performed worse than young participants on item and associative tests but to a greater extent on the latter. In contrast, for nonwords, older participants performed equally worse than young participants on item and associative tests. This is the first study to demonstrate that a manipulation of stimulus novelty can alter age-related associative deficits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comprehension of pronouns in young and older adults.

Explored, in 3 experiments, the issue of whether young (19–37 yrs old) and older (57–84 yrs old) adults differ in their use of pragmatic information in anaphor resolution. 64 Ss from each age group were required to select the antecedent for the pronoun he in sentence pairs such as "Henry spoke at a meeting while John drove to the beach. He brought along a surfboard." Results indicate that young and older Ss were equally influenced by contextual constraints in choosing pronoun referents when the sentence containing the pronoun followed immediately after the context-setting sentence. When extraneous material intervened, however, both age groups became less consistent in their pronoun choices, with older Ss being more affected. Evidence is presented that the failure to use pragmatic constraints in pronoun assignment resulted from inability to recall the relevant contextual information. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual specificity and implicit auditory priming in older and younger adults.

Age differences in perceptual specificity for implicit auditory priming were examined in 3 experiments. All 3 experiments began with a study phase during which participants rated words based on perceptual (shallow encoding) or semantic (deep encoding) attributes. After the study phase, participants were asked to identify filtered versions of repeated and new words (implicit test) and then to make old/new recognition judgments (explicit test). In contrast to earlier findings (D. L. Schacter, B. Church, & D. M. Osowiecki, 1994), older and younger adults were equally sensitive to study-to-test changes in speaking rate (Experiment 1), fundamental frequency (Experiment 2), and voice (Experiment 3). Explicit memory, in contrast, was significantly poorer for older adults but was minimally affected by changes in surface features. Findings from the study are discussed with respect to their implications for establishing the mechanisms mediating perceptual specificity and for their importance in understanding age-related changes in implicit memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repetition priming of words, pseudowords, and nonwords.

In 5 experiments, the authors assessed repetition priming for words, pseudowords, and nonwords using a task that combines an implicit perceptual fluency measure and a recognition memory assessment for each list item. Words and pseudowords generated a consistently strong repetition effect even when there was a failure to recognize the stimulus. In 2 of the experiments, the repetition effect for nonwords was reliably above chance even when there was a failure to recognize the stimulus. The authors propose a parallel distributed processing (PDP) model based on the work of J. McClelland and D. Rumelhart (1985) as a way to understand the mechanisms potentially responsible for the pattern of findings. Although the error-driven nature of learning in the model results in a poor fit to the nonword priming data, this is not endemic to all PDP models. Using a model based on Hebbian learning, the authors instantiate a property that they believe is characteristic of implicit memory-that learning is primarily based on the strengthening of connections between units that become active during the processing of a stimulus. This model provides a far more satisfactory account of the data than does the error-driven model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit and explicit memory in young and older adults.

In three experiments, young and older adults were compared on both implicit and explicit memory tasks. The size of repetition priming effects in word completion and in perceptual identification tasks did not differ reliably across ages. However, age-related decrements in performance were obtained in free recall, cued recall, and recognition. These results, similar to those observed in amnesics, suggest that older adults are impaired on tasks which require conscious recollection but that memory which depends on automatic activation processes is relatively unaffected by age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditioned-reflex facilitation in young and older adults

Young (18-30 years) and elderly (63-88 years) human subjects received 70 trials of single-cue classical eyeblink conditioning (paired group), or 70 explicitly unpaired presentations of the tone conditioned stimulus (CS) and airpuff unconditioned stimulus (unpaired group). Before and after conditioning, reflex-eliciting white noise and corneal airpuff stimuli were presented alone or paired with the CS to investigate the effects of conditioning on eyeblink reflex amplitude. The results showed increased conditioned responses in the paired group compared to the unpaired group for the young but not the elderly subjects. There was, however, evidence of conditioned facilitation of noise-elicited reflexes in both young and elderly subjects. These data indicate that conditioned facilitation of the startle reflex may be a sensitive indicator of classical conditioning processes in human subjects.     

Metamemorial predictors of memory performance in young and older adults.

The relationship between aspects of knowledge about memory and immediate and delayed recall on prose and word-list tasks was examined. Ss were 100 young and 100 older adults. Vocabulary ability was screened. Memory knowledge was assessed by the Metamemory in Adulthood (MIA) scale and the Short Inventory of Memory Experiences (SIME). Capacity and change measures of the MIA correlated with most dimensions of the SIME for both age groups. The anxiety measure of the MIA correlated with SIME measures only for the young. Regression analyses showed that strategy (MIA) predicted performance only for young adults, change (MIA) predicted performance only for older adults, and capacity (MIA) predicted performance for both age groups. Metamemory variables accounted for equivalent amounts of variance in both prose and word-list tasks, although there was an indication that prediction was slightly better for prose. Future researchers need to address the apparent increase in affect-related predictors of memory performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The structure of verbal abilities in young and older adults.

Four language sample measures as well as measures of vocabulary, verbal fluency, and memory span were obtained from a sample of young adults and a sample of older adults. Factor analysis was used to analyze the structure of the vocabulary, fluency, and span measures for each age group. Then an "extension" analysis was performed by using structural modeling techniques to determine how the language sample measures were related to the other measures. The measure of grammatical complexity was associated with measures of working memory including reading span and digit span. Two measures, sentence length in words and a measure of lexical diversity, were associated with the vocabulary measures. The fourth measure, propositional density, was associated with the fluency measures as a measure of processing efficiency. The structure of verbal abilities in young and older adults is somewhat different, suggesting age differences in processing efficiency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movements of young and older adults during reading.

The eye movements of young and older adults were tracked as they read sentences varying in syntactic complexity. In Experiment 1, cleft object and object relative clause sentences were more difficult to process than cleft subject and subject relative clause sentences; however, older adults made many more regressions, resulting in increased regression path fixation times and total fixation times, than young adults while processing cleft object and object relative clause sentences. In Experiment 2, older adults experienced more difficulty than young adults while reading cleft and relative clause sentences with temporary syntactic ambiguities created by deleting the that complementizers. Regression analyses indicated that readers with smaller working memories need more regressions and longer fixation times to process cleft object and object relative clause sentences. These results suggest that age-associated declines in working memory do affect syntactic processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of affective prosody by young and older adults.

Emotion is conveyed in speech by semantic content (what is said) and by prosody (how it is said). Prior research suggests that older adults benefit from linguistic prosody when comprehending language but that they have difficulty understanding affective prosody. In a series of 3 experiments, young and older adults listened to sentences in which the emotional cues conveyed by semantic content and affective prosody were either congruent or incongruent and then indicated whether the talker sounded happy or sad. When judging the emotion of the talker, young adults were more attentive to the affective prosodic cues than to the semantic cues, whereas older adults performed less consistently when these cues conflicted. Participants’ reading and repetition of the sentences were recorded so that age- and emotion-related changes in the production of emotional speech cues could be examined. Both young and older adults were able to produce affective prosody. The age-related difference in perceiving emotion was eliminated when listeners repeated the sentences before responding, consistent with previous findings regarding the beneficial role of repetition in conversation. The results of these experiments suggest that there are age-related differences in interpreting affective prosody but that repeating may be a compensatory strategy that could minimize the everyday consequences of these differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)