Age-related deficits in associative memory: The influence of impaired strategic retrieval.

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated whether impaired strategic retrieval processes contribute to the age-related deficit in associative memory. To do so, they compared older and younger adults on measures of associative memory that place high demands on retrieval processes (associative identification and recall-to-reject) to measures that place low demands on such processes (associative reinstatement and recall-to-accept). Results showed that older adults were severely impaired on associative identification and recall-to-reject measures; relatively intact on recall-to-accept measures, unless recollection was prominent; and intact on associative reinstatement measures. Together, these findings suggest that impairment in strategic retrieval accounts for older adults' deficits in memory for associative information and that this deficit, above and beyond poor binding of items, leads to and amplifies an impairment in overall recollection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Associative recognition of face pairs by younger and older adults: The role of familiarity-based processing.

Previous research suggested that older adults have a specific impairment in remembering verbal associative information, but it is unclear how elaboration and familiarity might influence this deficit in situations that involve perceptual processing. In the present experiments, younger and older participants studied male-female pairs of faces. Participants were then administered an associative recognition test consisting of previously studied pairs, pairs that contained previously studied items that were not studied together (i.e., conjunction pairs), and entirely new pairs of faces, and participants were instructed to identify pairs that had been presented together at study. Overall, participants were successful at recognizing previously presented pairs but were highly likely to mistakenly endorse conjunction pairs. This pattern was more pronounced for older adults, especially when items were repeated at encoding. Such data suggest that memory for face pairs relies largely on the familiarity of each face and not on a more precise recollection of associative information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential effects of age on item and associative measures of memory: A meta-analysis.

In this meta-analysis, the authors evaluated recent suggestions that older adults' episodic memory impairments are partially due to a reduced ability to encode and retrieve associated/bound units of information. Results of 90 studies of episodic memory for both item and associative information in 3,197 young and 3,192 older adults provided support for the age-related associative/binding deficit suggestion, indicating a larger effect of age on memory for associative information than for item information. Moderators assessed included the type of associations, encoding instructions, materials, and test format. Results indicated an age-related associative deficit in memory for source, context, temporal order, spatial location, and item pairings, in both verbal and nonverbal material. An age-related associative deficit was quite pronounced under intentional learning instructions but was not clearly evident under incidental learning instructions. Finally, test format was also found to moderate the associative deficit, with older adults showing an associative/binding deficit when item memory was evaluated via recognition tests but not when item memory was evaluated via recall tests, in which case the age-related deficits were similar for item and associative information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of aging and prospective memory on recognition of item and associative information.

Older adults typically perform worse than younger adults on tasks of associative, relative to item, memory. One account of this deficit is that older adults have fewer attentional resources to encode associative information. Previous researchers investigating this issue have divided attention at encoding and then have examined whether associative and item recognition were differentially affected. In the current study, we used a different cognitive task shown to tax attentional resources: event-based prospective memory. Although older adults demonstrated worse associative, relative to item, memory, the presence of the prospective memory task at encoding decreased item and associative memory accuracy to the same extent in both age groups. These results do not support the resource account of age-related associative deficits. (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)     

Using maintenance rehearsal to explore recognition memory.

We examined associative and item recognition using the maintenance rehearsal paradigm. Our intent was to control for mnemonic strategies; to produce a low, graded level of learning; and to provide evidence of the role of attention in long-term memory. An advantage for low-frequency words emerged in both associative and item recognition at very low levels of learning. This early emergence casts doubt on explanations based on the traditional concept of recollection. A comparison of false alarms supports a role for item information or the joint use of cues but not familiarity in producing associative false alarms. We may also have found a way to measure the amount of attention being paid to a to-be-learned item or pair, independently of memory performance on the attended item. This result may be an important step in determining whether coherent theories about the role of attention in long- and short-term memory can be created. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Explaining age differences in temporal working memory.

To determine the cognitive mechanisms underlying age differences in temporal working memory (WM), the authors examined the contributions of item memory, associative memory, simple order memory, and multiple item memory, using parallel versions of the delayed-matching-to-sample task. Older adults performed more poorly than younger adults on tests of temporal memory, but there were no age differences in nonassociative item memory, regardless of the amount of information to be learned. In contrast, a combination of associative and simple order memory, both of which were reduced in older adults, completely accounted for age-related declines in temporal memory. The authors conclude that 2 mechanisms may underlie age differences in temporal WM, namely, a generalized decline in associative ability and a specific difficulty with order information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

More data-driven processing at retrieval reduces age-related memory deficits.

The environmental support hypothesis postulates that it may be possible to reduce older adults' deficits in episodic memory by providing environmental support at the encoding and/or retrieval phases. To examine the validity of this hypothesis, we varied the amount of retrieval support by manipulating data-driven processes. Young and older adults performed a word-stem cued recall task under a low data-driven condition (LDDC) in which the retrieval cue comprised 3 letters, and a higher data-driven condition (HDDC) in which the cue comprised 4 letters. Older adults benefitted more than younger adults from the additional support. Older adults exhibited a large deficit relative to younger adults in the LDDC condition but no age differences were found in the HDDC condition. These findings demonstrate that age-related memory deficits can be reduced by increasing the environmental support at retrieval associated with the data-driven component of retrieval processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scopolamine impairs human recognition memory: Data and modeling.

Eight subjects studied a set of complex visual images after administration of 0.4 mg scopolamine. Another 8 subjects performed the same task without drug administration. On a subsequent item recognition test, subjects rated, on a 5-point scale, their confidence that the studied pictures and an equal number of unstudied lures were actually presented. Results showed that scopolamine affected responses to studied items, but not unstudied lures, demonstrating an unambiguous effect of scopolamine on recognition memory. To describe the scopolamine-injected subjects' data, the authors constructed a new model of 2-process recognition that includes the A. P. Yonelinas (1994) model as a limiting case. The model analysis suggests that scopolamine affected both familiarity and recollection. In particular, scopolamine did not affect the frequency with which recollection took place, but rather, affected the amount of recollected information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory for people and their actions: Further evidence for an age-related associative deficit.

The associative deficit hypothesis (M. Naveh-Benjamin, 2000) attributes age-related memory deficits to the inability to encode and retrieve bound units of information. The present experiment extended this deficit to a new form of stimuli, dynamic displays of people and their performance of everyday actions. Older and younger adults viewed a series of brief video clips, each showing a different person performing a different action, and were tested over memory for individual people, individual actions, and the person-action combinations. Older adults did exhibit an associative deficit, and this was related to an increased proportion of false alarms on the associative test. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of aging and divided attention on memory for items and their contexts.

It is commonly found that memory for context declines disproportionately with aging, arguably due to a general age-related deficit in associative memory processes. One possible mechanism for such deficits is an age-related reduction in available processing resources. In two experiments we compared the effects of aging to the effects of division of attention in younger adults on memory for items and context. Using a technique proposed by Craik (1989), linear functions relating memory performance for items and their contexts were derived for a Young Full Attention group, a Young Divided Attention group, and an Older Adult group. Results suggested that the Old group showed an additional deficit in associative memory that was not mimicked by divided attention. It is speculated that both divided attention and aging are associated with a loss of available processing resources that may reflect inefficient frontal lobe functioning, whereas the additional age-related decrement in associative memory may reflect inefficient processing in medial-temporal regions. (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)     

Differential age effects for implicit and explicit conceptual associative memory.

Older adults show disproportionate declines in explicit memory for associative relative to item information. However, the source of these declines is still uncertain. One explanation is a generalized impairment in the processing of associative information. A second explanation is a more specialized impairment in the strategic, effortful recollection of associative information, leaving less effortful forms of associative retrieval preserved. Assessing implicit memory of new associations is a way to distinguish between these viewpoints. To date, mixed findings have emerged from studies of associative priming in aging. One factor that may account for the variability is whether the manipulations inadvertently involve strategic, explicit processes. In two experiments we present a novel paradigm of conceptual associative priming in which subjects make speeded associative judgments about unrelated objects. Using a size classification task, Experiment 1 showed equivalent associative priming between young and older adults. Experiment 2 generalized the results of Experiment 1 to an inside/outside classification task, while replicating the typical age-related impairment in associative but not item recognition. Taken together, the findings support the viewpoint that older adults can incidentally encode and retrieve new meaningful associations despite difficulty with the intentional recollection of the same information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of attention on age-related relational memory deficits: Evidence from a novel attentional manipulation.

Healthy aging is often accompanied by episodic memory decline. Prior studies have consistently demonstrated that older adults show disproportionate deficits in relational memory (RM) relative to item memory (IM). Despite rich evidence of an age-related RM deficit, the source of this deficit remains unspecified. One of the most widely investigated factors of age-related RM impairment is a reduction in attentional resources. However, no prior studies have demonstrated that reduced attentional resources are the critical source of age-related RM deficits. Here, we used qualitatively different attention tasks and tested whether reduced attention for relational processing underlies the RM deficit observed in aging. In Experiment 1, we imposed either item-detection or relation-detection attention tasks on young adults during episodic memory encoding and found that only the concurrent attention task that involves relational processing disproportionately impaired RM performance in young adults. Moreover, by ruling out the possible confound of task difficulty on the disproportionate RM impairment, we further demonstrated that reduced relational attention is a key factor for the age-related RM deficit. In Experiment 2, we replicated the results from Experiment 1 by using different materials of stimuli and found that the effect of relational attention on RM is material general. The results of Experiment 2 also showed that reducing attentional resources for relational processing in young adults strikingly equated their RM performance to that of older adults. Thus, this study documents the first evidence that reduced attentional resources for relational processing are a critical factor for the relational memory impairment observed in aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

True memory, false memory, and subjective recollection deficits after focal parietal lobe lesions.

Objective: There is mounting evidence that the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) plays an important role in episodic memory. We previously found that patients with PPC damage exhibit retrieval-related episodic memory deficits. Here we assess whether parietal lobe damage affects episodic memory on a different task: the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) false-memory paradigm. Methods: Two patients with bilateral PPC damage and a group of matched controls were tested. In Experiment 1, the task was to remember words; in Experiment 2 the task was to remember pictures of common objects. Prior studies have shown that normal participants have high levels of false memory to words, low levels to pictures. Results: The patients exhibited significantly lower levels of false memory to words. One patient showed significantly elevated levels of false memory to pictures. The patients' false memories were accompanied by reduced levels of recollection, as tested by a Remember/Know procedure. Conclusions: PPC damage causes decreased levels of false memories and an abnormal Remember/Know profile. Their false memory rate is similar to the rate exhibited by patients with medial temporal lobe damage. These results support the view that portions of the PPC play a critical role in objective and subjective aspects of recollection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Source memory for unidentified stimuli.

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether participants have source memory for test stimuli that they cannot identify. Using a paradigm developed to investigate the phenomenon of recognition without identification (Peynircioglu, 1990), we found that even when participants could not identify a previously studied item, they nonetheless exhibited above-chance performance on a source discrimination task. Most surprising was that source accuracy for unidentified items was independent of old–new discrimination and not different from that of identified items. These results are interpreted as evidence that source memory is based on a continuous, as opposed to a threshold-like, process and suggest that recollection may, in some circumstances, contribute to the phenomenon of recognition without identification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of pure pair repetition on younger and older adults' associative memory.

Although aging causes relatively minor impairment in recognition memory for components, older adults' ability to remember associations between components is typically significantly compromised, relative to that of younger adults. This pattern could be associated with older adults' relatively intact familiarity, which helps preserve component memory, coupled with a marked decline in recollection, which leads to a decline in associative memory. The purpose of the current study is to explore possible methods that allow older adults to rely on pair familiarity in order to improve their associative memory performance. Participants in 2 experiments were repeatedly presented with either single items or pairings of items prior to a study list so that the items and the pairs were already familiar during the study phase. Pure pair repetition (the effects of pair repetition after the effects of item repetition are taken into account) increased associative memory for older and younger adults. Findings based on remember and know judgments suggest that familiarity but not recollection is involved in mediating the repetition effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging, source memory, and misrecollections.

The authors propose an illusory recollection account of why cognitive aging is associated with episodic memory deficits. After listening to statements presented by either a female or a male speaker, older adults were prone to misrecollecting past events. The authors' illusory recollection account is instantiated in a new illusory recollection signal detection model that provides a better fit of older adults' data than does the standard signal detection model. They observed that age-related differences in source memory (as measured by source d′ scores) virtually disappear after accounting for the occurrence of illusory recollections. These data suggest that age-related source memory impairments are not due to older adults' remembering less diagnostic source information and having to guess more. Instead, older adults appear to misremember past events more often than younger adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Process demands of rejection mechanisms of recognition memory.

A surge of research has been conducted to examine memory editing mechanisms that help distinguish accurate from inaccurate memories. In the present experiment, the authors examined the ability of participants to use novelty detection, recollection rejection, and plausibility judgments to reject lures presented on a recognition memory test. Participants studied a list of word pairs that were arranged in a category relationship (both words from the same category) or an unrelated relationship (both words from different categories) under full or divided attention. At test, participants were given a yes/no recognition test in which they were to respond after seeing the test items for 400 ms or 2,800 ms. Some of the test items were rearranged word pairs that were consistent with the study relationship, whereas others were inconsistent with the study relationship. The results demonstrate that the participants required full attention at study to use novelty detection, recollection rejection, and plausibility judgments to reject lures. Moreover, the results indicate that a long response deadline at test was needed for participants to use both recollection rejection and plausibility judgments to reject lures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What you get out of memory depends on the question you ask.

Following study, participants received 2 tests. The 1st was a recognition test; the 2nd was designed to tap recollection. The objective was to examine performance on Test 1 conditional on Test 2 performance. In Experiment 1, contrary to process dissociation assumptions, exclusion errors better predicted subsequent recollection than did inclusion errors. In Experiments 2 and 3, with alternate questions posed on Test 2, words having high estimates of recollection with one question had high estimates of familiarity with the other question. Results supported the following: (a) the 2-test procedure has considerable potential for elucidating the relationship between recollection and familiarity; (b) there is substantial evidence for dependency between such processes when estimates are obtained using the process dissociation and remember-know procedures; and (c) order of information access appears to depend on the question posed to the memory system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)