Abstract
Associative memory deficit underlies a part of older adults' deficient episodic memory due to the reduced ability to bind units of information. In this article we further assess the mechanism underlying this deficit, by assessing the degree to which we can model it in young adults under conditions of divided attention. We shall describe two experiments in this paper; these experiments investigate item and associative recognition in young adults under full- or divided-attention conditions. The secondary tasks employed were N-back like (NBL), which serves as a working memory updating task, and parity judgement and visuospatial (VS) tasks, which serve as non-working memory tasks. The results of both experiments show that only the NBL specifically affected associative recognition, while the other tasks affected item and associative memory to the same degree, indicating a general resource competition. These results presented a convergence of evidence for the associative deficit in older adults by modelling it in young adults.
Highlights
There is a body of research on lifespan cognitive processes that investigated memory performance in older adults to identify the causes of their memory decline
The purpose of our study is to examine whether continuous working memory (WM) secondary tasks can simulate older adults’ associative deficit in young adults by creating a clear distinction between the cognitive mechanisms that the tasks required
To address the hypothesis tested in this experiment, we computed a three-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), with 2 X 2 X 2 for the equated measure of memory accuracy
Summary
There is a body of research on lifespan cognitive processes that investigated memory performance in older adults to identify the causes of their memory decline. Various studies suggested several explanations for older adults’ memory decline: a reduction in attentional resources, processing speed and failure of inhibitory processes [1,2,3,4]. While all these explanations described a deficit in memory processing, they did not fully explain the significant episodic memory deficit in older adults [5, 6]. Some studies explained that the episodic memory age decline was because they struggle to bind together a contextual feature of the event [7, 8] Based on this explanation, the Associative-Deficit Hypothesis (ADH) framework was proposed [6]. This framework indicates that deficiency in creating and retrieving associations between different components of an episode is the primary cause for the decline in older adults’ episodic memory
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
