Age-related Differences In Memory Research Articles

Memory precision and age differentially predict the use of decision-making strategies across the lifespan

Memory function declines in normal aging, in a relatively continuous fashion following middle-age. The effect of aging on decision-making is less well-understood, with seemingly conflicting results on both the nature and direction of these age effects. One route for clarifying these mixed findings is to understand how age-related differences in memory affect decisions. Recent work has proposed memory sampling as a specific computational role for memory in decision-making, alongside well-studied mechanisms of reinforcement learning (RL). Here, we tested the hypothesis that age-related declines in episodic memory alter memory sampling. Participants (total N = 361; ages 18–77) performed one of two variants of a standard reward-guided decision experiment with additional trial-unique mnemonic content and a separately-administered task for assessing memory precision. When we fit participants’ choices with a hybrid computational model implementing both memory-based and RL-driven valuation side-by-side, we found that memory precision tracked the contribution of memory sampling to choice. At the same time, age corresponded to decreasing influence of RL and increasing perseveration. A second experiment confirmed these results and further revealed that memory precision tracked the specificity of memories selected for sampling. Together, these findings suggest that differences in decision-making across the lifespan may be related to memory function, and that interventions which aim to improve the former may benefit from targeting the latter.

Aging attenuates the memory advantage for unexpected objects in real-world scenes

Across the adult lifespan memory processes are subject to pronounced changes. Prior knowledge and expectations might critically shape functional differences; however, corresponding findings have remained ambiguous so far. Here, we chose a tailored approach to scrutinize how schema (in-)congruencies affect older and younger adults’ memory for objects embedded in real-world scenes, a scenario close to everyday life memory demands. A sample of 23 older (52–81 years) and 23 younger adults (18–38 years) freely viewed 60 photographs of scenes in which target objects were included that were either congruent or incongruent with the given context information. After a delay, recognition performance for those objects was determined. In addition, recognized objects had to be matched to the scene context in which they were previously presented. While we found schema violations beneficial for object recognition across age groups, the advantage was significantly less pronounced in older adults. We moreover observed an age-related congruency bias for matching objects to their original scene context. Our findings support a critical role of predictive processes for age-related memory differences and indicate enhanced weighting of predictions with age. We suggest that recent predictive processing theories provide a particularly useful framework to elaborate on age-related functional vulnerabilities as well as stability.

Age-related differences in memory when offloading important information.

People can choose to use external memory aids and offload information to help them remember it, but it is unclear how objective and subjective value or importance influence offloading decisions in younger and older adults. We presented younger adults (n = 99; age range: 18-31) and older adults (n = 93; age range: 60-96) with items to remember for a later test and allowed them to offload a subset of the presented items. In Experiment 1, the to-be-remembered information was lists of associated words paired with point values counting toward participants' scores if recalled. In Experiment 2, the to-be-remembered information was lists of items along a theme, such as packing for vacation, which differed in subjective value. Results revealed that when words were paired with objective point values, younger adults were more selective in their offloading decisions and subsequent recall than older adults (i.e., younger adults were more likely to offload and recall high-value items than low-value items relative to older adults). When the to-be-remembered items instead differed in subjective value, older adults were more selective in their offloading decisions than younger adults. Specifically, older adults were more likely to offload words they rated as important relative to items they rated as less important while younger adults displayed the opposite pattern-younger adults were more likely to offload words they rated as less important compared with items they rated as more important. This difference in offloading tendencies when to-be-remembered information varies in subjective value may be indicative of older adults engaging in a form of metacognitive control that can help ensure the use of responsible remembering. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Memory, aging and the brain: Old findings and current issues

In this article I reprise some selected findings and issues from my previous behavioural work on age-related differences in memory, and relate them to current work on the neural correlates of encoding, retrieval and representation. In particular, I describe the case study of a woman who had persistent experiences of erroneous recollection. I also describe the results of a study showing a double dissociation of implicit and explicit memory in younger and older adults. Finally, I assess recent work on loss of specificity in older adults’ encoding and retrieval processes of episodic events. In all cases I attempt to relate these older findings to current ideas and empirical results in the area of memory, aging, and the brain.

Aging shifts the relative contributions of episodic and semantic memory to decision-making.

Healthy aging is accompanied by well-characterized shifts in memory systems: episodic memory tends to decline with age while semantic memory remains relatively intact, with some knowledge domains strengthening. Beyond reflecting on the past, these distinct memory systems often guide decisions about the future. Yet how such age-related memory shifts influence simple value-based choices remain understudied. Here, younger (18-24 years) and older (61-75 years) adults completed a card game in which they could use task-relevant episodic memories to maximize the number of points they earned. Critically, they could also use task-irrelevant semantic memories to guide their choices. Both younger and older adults successfully used episodic memory to make decisions, but older adults did so less reliably than younger adults. Further, while younger adults strategically suppressed task-irrelevant semantic memories when a relevant episodic memory could be used, older adults used semantic memory to guide their decisions regardless of the relevance of episodic memory. We provide evidence that declining inhibitory control may play a role in how older adults arbitrate between competing memory sources when making decisions. These effects are consistent with the literature on age-related shifts in memory and cognitive control systems and add to a growing body of work on how episodic memories inform reinforcement learning and value-based decision-making. Our findings highlight how patterns of age-related memory differences can have consequences for value-based choices, which has implications for other types of decision-making, from the economic to the mundane. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Cluttered memory representations shape cognition in old age.

Declines in episodic memory in older adults are typically attributed to differences in encoding strategies and/or retrieval processes. These views omit a critical factor in age-related memory differences: the nature of the representations that are formed. Here, we review evidence that older adults create more cluttered (or richer) representations of events than do younger adults. These cluttered representations might include target information along with recently activated but no-longer-relevant information, prior knowledge cued by the ongoing situation, as well as irrelevant information in the current environment. Although these representations can interfere with the retrieval of target information, they can also support other memory-dependent cognitive functions.

Age-related differences in memory for “who,” “when,” and “where” are detectable in middle-aged adults

ABSTRACT Our study examined age-related differences across the adult lifespan using a recently developed test assessing memory for “who, when, and where” in addition to associations among these elements. Young (ages 18–25), middle-aged (ages 40–55), and older adults (ages 60+) were asked to remember a sequence of pictures of different faces paired with different places and place the pairs in the correct sequence. Young adults remembered significantly mores face-place pairs in the correct sequence than middle-aged (p < .05) and older adults (p < .05), but there were no significant differences between middle-aged and older adults. Furthermore, young adults remembered significantly more face-place pairs irrespective of sequence than older adults (p < .05). However, there were no other significant differences among the groups.Using a rapidly administered test that integrates aspects of everyday episodic memory, we found evidence for age-related differences in test performance beginning in middle age.

What affects the magnitude of age-related dual-task costs in working memory? The role of stimulus domain and access to semantic representations.

Although there is evidence that the effect of including a concurrent processing demand on the storage of information in working memory is disproportionately larger for older than younger adults, not all studies show this age-related impairment, and the critical factors responsible for any such impairment remain elusive. Here we assess whether domain overlap between storage and processing activities, and access to semantic representations, are important determinants of performance in a sample of younger and older adults (N = 119). We developed four versions of a processing task by manipulating the type of stimuli involved (either verbal or non-verbal) and the decision that participants had to make about the stimuli presented on the screen. Participants either had to perform a spatial judgement, in deciding whether the verbal or non-verbal item was presented above or below the centre of the screen, or a semantic judgement, in deciding whether the stimulus refers to something living or not living. The memory task was serial-ordered recall of visually presented letters. The study revealed a large increase in age-related memory differences when concurrent processing was required. These differences were smaller when storage and processing activities both used verbal materials. Dual-task effects on processing were also disproportionate for older adults. Age differences in processing performance appeared larger for tasks requiring spatial decisions rather than semantic decisions. We discuss these findings in relation to three competing frameworks of working memory and the extant literature on cognitive ageing.

Adult age differences in the use of temporal and semantic context in dual-list free recall.

Healthy older adults experience episodic memory deficits when temporal context reinstatement is required, but they also have preserved semantic memory. Semantic associations can therefore support or impair older adults' retrieval from a specific temporal context. The present experiment characterized the roles of pre- and postretrieval processing in age-related memory differences when semantic and temporal contexts worked together or in opposition. Participants studied 2 lists of exemplars from either the same category or different categories and recalled from one list. During recall, participants reported all words that came to mind and made source monitoring judgments. Both groups initiated first retrievals similarly from primacy positions on delayed tests, but older adults initiated first retrievals from later recency positions on immediate tests. Older adults took longer on average to initiate subsequent retrievals, especially when recalling from List 1 and when exemplars from the same category appeared in both lists. Further, trial-level analyses showed that retrieval latencies were longer when fewer responses were produced, and older adults produced fewer responses. When response production was equated, retrieval latencies were more comparable for both age groups. Finally, when lists included exemplars from the same category, older adults produced intrusions earlier and monitored them less effectively on immediate tests, but both age groups showed near-perfect intrusion monitoring when lists included exemplars from different categories. Collectively, these findings show that both pre- and postretrieval processing contributed to age-related recall differences when semantic associations facilitated or opposed reinstatement and monitoring of temporal context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The emergence of age-related changes in recognition memory in healthy middle-aged adults using the CVLT-II

ABSTRACT Although age-related memory differences between young and older adults have been well documented, fewer studies have investigated memory changes in middle age. We examined the performance of healthy middle-aged adults (40–55 years of age; n = 32) in relation to healthy young (18–25 years of age; n = 57) and older adults (65+ years of age; n = 55) on variations of recognition discriminability (RD) indices derived from the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition (CVLT-II). Middle-aged adults performed significantly worse (ps < .05) than young adults on multiple RD indices that incorporate semantically related distractor items, suggesting memory changes in middle age may be associated with increased susceptibility to semantic interference. Moreover, middle-aged adults performed comparably to older adults across all RD indices, indicating the recognition profile of middle-aged adults on RD indices more closely resembles that of older adults than young adults.

Use of immersive virtual reality to assess episodic memory: A validation study in older adults

ABSTRACTVirtual reality (VR) allows for the creation of ecological environments that could be used for cognitive assessment and intervention. This study comprises two parts that describe and assess an immersive VR task, the Virtual Shop, which can be used to measure episodic memory. Part 1 addresses its applicability in healthy older adults by measuring presence, motivation, and cybersickness symptoms. Part 2 addresses its construct validity by investigating correlations between performance in the VR task and on a traditional experimental memory task, and by measuring whether the VR task is sensitive to age-related memory differences. Fifty-seven older and 20 younger adults were assessed in the Virtual Shop, in which they memorised and fetched 12 familiar items. Part 1 showed high levels of presence, higher levels of motivation for the VR than for the traditional task, and negligible cybersickness symptoms. Part 2 indicates that memory performance in the VR task is positively correlated with performance on a traditional memory task for both age groups, and age-related differences were found on the VR and traditional memory tasks. Thus, the use of VR is feasible in older adults and the Virtual Shop is a valid task to assess and train episodic memory in this population.

When green is positive and red is negative: Aging and the influence of color on emotional memories.

Numerous studies have reported age-related differences in memory for emotional information. One explanation places emphasis on an emotion processing preference in older adults that reflects their socioemotional self-relevant goals. Here, we evaluate the degree to which this preference in memory may be modulated by color. In 2 experiments, younger and older adults were asked to study a series of affective words (Experiment 1) or affective pictures (Experiment 2) and then presented with an immediate yes/no memory recognition task. In particular, words and pictures were colored according to the following valence-color associations: positive-green, negative-red, and neutral-blue. Each study condition included both congruent (e.g., positive-green) and incongruent associations (e.g., positive-red). For both experiments, participants showed an advantage for congruent associations compared with other types of valence-color pairings that emphasized a robust joint effect of color and affective valence in memory. More specifically, older adults' memory was sensitive to positive-green stimuli only. We discussed results in line with mechanisms underlying positivity effects in memory and the effect of color on emotional memory encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record

DRYAD and ADH: Further comments on explaining age-related differences in memory.

Recently, Smyth and Naveh-Benjamin (2016) questioned some of the main assumptions/hypotheses of DRYAD (or density of representations yields age-related deficits), a global-deficit model of aging and memory judgments (Benjamin, 2010; Benjamin et al., 2012). Smyth and Naveh-Benjamin (2016) provided empirical evidence that seems incompatible with DRYAD, but that fits the associative deficit hypothesis (ADH; Naveh-Benjamin, 2000), 1 specific-deficit theoretical view. In response, Aaron Benjamin (2016) offered a discussion of the complementary strengths and weaknesses of the DRYAD and the ADH, and the potential ways they might work together. We agree with many of his comments, but are not convinced that DRYAD is able to explain basic replicable empirical evidence of the type mentioned in Smyth and Naveh-Benjamin (2016). We discuss the reasons why we are not fully convinced by the demonstration of DRYAD's simulation of results presented in Benjamin (2016) and then present an implementation of ADH in a computationally based age-related impaired neuromodulation approach that was shown to simulate the basic empirical results of age-related associative memory deficits. We also discuss the issues of parsimony of theories and the appropriate type of representation, in the context of global versus specific deficits theoretical views. Finally, we show that the ADH's take on the distinction between items and associations has been adopted by some global computational models of memory. We believe that considerations of the above issues and others raised by Benjamin (2016) can lead to fruitful discussions that will benefit both theory development and existing knowledge of aging and memory.

Age-related differences in memory for time, temporal reconstruction, and the availability and use of temporal landmarks

We examined the accuracy of memory for the time of an event, the use of temporal reconstruction, and the availability and use of temporal landmarks from late middle childhood to adulthood. Children, adolescents, and adults (N=128) viewed a film during a campus visit. Eight months later, we asked them to (a) recall the time of the previous visit on a range of time scales; (b) explain how they arrived at those estimates; and (c) provide other dateable events from their lives (temporal landmarks). The accuracy of time judgments increased with age on the day-of-the-week and month time scales only. All age groups used reconstruction to arrive at their estimates for most of the time scales tested. Reports of dateable events from past years indicated that the availability of temporal landmarks increased across this age range. These results reflect a mixture of similarities and differences across the ages tested.

Thirst for knowledge: The effects of curiosity and interest on memory in younger and older adults.

Given age-related memory impairments, one's level of curiosity or interest could enhance memory for certain information. In the current study, younger and older adults read trivia questions, rated how curious they were to learn each answer, provided confidence and interest ratings, and judgments of learning after learning the answer. No age-related differences in memory were found. Analyses indicated that curiosity and interest contributed to the formation of judgments of learning. Additionally, interest had a unique increasing relationship with older, but not younger, adults' memory performance after a one-week delay. The results suggest that subjective interest may serve to enhance older adults' memory.

Age-related differences in memory for cooperators and cheaters: Evidence of the positivity effect and appearance bias

Age-related differences in memory for cooperators and cheaters: Evidence of the positivity effect and appearance bias

Relational Memory Processes in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Research into memory in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) suggests intact item memory but difficulties in forming relations between items (Bowler, Gaigg, & Lind, 2011). In this study, we tested memory for items as well as for sequential, spatial, and associative relations between items with the same paradigm using abstract shapes in ASD and typically developing (TD) individuals. Participants studied shape triplets on a computer screen and memory was subsequently tested either for the individual items making up the triplets, the screen-locations, the order or the combinations of items presented at study. Contrary to our predictions, performance was significantly lower in the ASD group on all four tasks. The result raises questions about how intact item memory is in ASD, which role task complexity plays, and how item-specific versus relational processing affect task performance. One possibility is that TD individuals relied more on relational processing in the current study and might have therefore had an advantage over ASD individuals. This idea is supported by the result of a preliminary analysis of age-related differences in memory across the midadult lifespan in both groups. Age seems to affect order memory less in ASD compared with TD individuals where it leads to a significant decrease in performance. This might indicate a decrease in relational processing in TD but not ASD individuals with increasing age. More research is needed to answer questions about the change in cognition in ASD individuals across the lifespan.

Age-related differences in memory after attending to distinctiveness or similarity during learning

Episodic memory is vulnerable to age-related change, with older adults demonstrating both impairments in retrieving contextual details and susceptibility to interference among similar events. Such impairments may be due in part to an age-related decline in the ability to encode distinct memory representations. Recent research has examined how manipulating stimulus properties to emphasize distinctiveness can reduce age-related deficits in memory. However, few studies have addressed whether learning strategies that differentially encourage distinctiveness processing attenuate age-related differences in episodic memory. In the present study, participants engaged in two incidental encoding tasks emphasizing either distinctiveness or similarity processing. Results demonstrated higher rates of recollection for stimuli studied under the distinctiveness task than the similarity task in younger but not older adults. These findings suggest a declining capacity for distinctiveness processing to benefit memory in older adults, and raise the possibility that strategies that enhance gist-based encoding may attenuate age-related memory deficits.

Age Differences and Schema Effects in Memory for Crime Information

Background/Study Context: This study investigated age-related differences in memory for crime information. Older adults have been found to rely more than young adults on schema- and stereotype-based processing in memory, and such age differences may have implications in the criminal justice system. Some prior research has examined schema-based processing among older adults in legal settings, but no studies have tested for schema effects on older adults' memory for specific details of a crime. Methods: Older adults (N = 56, ages 65–93) and young adults (N = 52, ages 18–22) read a passage about a criminal suspect's “bad” or “good” childhood, and then read a crime report containing incriminating, exonerating, and neutral details with regard to the suspect. Participants were subsequently tested on recognition of accurate versus altered details from the crime report. Participants also rated the suspect“s guilt, and completed a battery of neuropsychological tests. Correct and false recognition rates were analyzed with ANOVA to compare means across age group, evidence type, and background type, and guilt ratings were analyzed with linear regression using neuropsychological scores as predictors. Results: Among older adults, an interaction was found between evidence type (incriminating/exonerating) and suspect's background (good/bad childhood) in false recognition of altered details from the crime report, supporting the hypothesis that schema-based processing influenced older adult memory from crime information. Additionally, although guilt ratings were not related to the suspect's background for either age group, they were predicted by older adults' short-delay recall (β = −.37), suggesting that cognitive decline may play a role in older adults' interpretations of evidence. Conclusion: The findings suggest reduced cognitive capacity in older adults increases schema-based processing in memory for crime information, and are consistent with research in other domains that has demonstrated greater schema effects in memory with aging. The results may have implications for criminal justice, and open up possibilities for further research on how young and older adults may differ in memory for specific types of crime information.

Using eye movement measures to investigate effects of age on memory for objects in a scene

We examined whether there were age-related differences in eye movements during intentional encoding of a photographed scene that might account for age-related differences in memory of objects in the scene. Younger and older adults exhibited similar scan path patterns, and visited each region of interest in the scene with similar frequency and duration. Despite the similarity in viewing, there were fundamental differences in the viewing–memory relationship. Although overall recognition was poorer in the older than younger adults, there was no age effect on recognition probability for objects visited only once. More importantly, re-visits to objects brought gain in recognition probability for the younger adults, but not for the older adults. These results suggest that the age-related differences in object recognition performance are in part due to inefficient integration of information from working memory to longer-term memory.