Aging and memory for frequency of occurrence of novel, visual stimuli: Direct and indirect measures.

Abstract

Memory for frequency of occurrence typically is investigated using familiar stimuli (e.g., words) and with "direct" tests of memory; that is, the subject is required to state explicitly how often an item occurred or which item occurred more often. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effects of age on the ability to make judgments (i.e., direct tests) regarding the frequency of occurrence of words and of novel, visual stimuli (Japanese ideograms). In Experiment 3, young and old subjects were compared on "indirect" measures of memory for frequency of occurrence of these ideograms, as indexed by the mere exposure effect. On the direct test of memory, elderly and young subjects did not differ when shown words, but elderly were impaired compared with young subjects when ideograms were presented. When tested indirectly, both groups were sensitive to the frequency of occurrence of ideograms. The pattern of results replicates and extends previous findings regarding performance dissociations between direct and indirect measures of memory in aging.

Competing cues: Older adults rely on knowledge in the face of fluency.

“…Young and older adults responded similarly when fluency provided the only cue for truth; when neither recollection nor knowledge retrieval could play a significant role (i.e., for unknown items), both age groups exhibited a robust illusory truth effect. These data complement the findings that repetition increases liking (Halpern & O’Connor, 2000; Wiggs, 1993) and truth judgments (Law et al, 1998, Mutter et al, 1995), regardless of age.…”

Repetition Priming Across the Adult Lifespan—The Long and Short of It

“…For items presented three times, recognition was more accurate and the magnitude of priming was greater compared to items presented once, and this advantage was observed in young and old participants (also see Wiggs, 1993;Wiggs et al, 1994). However, the effect of time on this enhancement was different for each task.…”

“…Repetition enhances explicit memory performance after short and long delays (Ebbinghaus, 1913) for both young and elderly subjects (Wiggs, 1993)-as a result, we may avoid having subjects performing at floor in the more difficult memory sessions (i.e., at 1 month, particularly for elderly participants). Although multiple exposures of an item have been shown to increase the magnitude of priming after short delays in both young and elderly subjects (Wiggs et al, 1994), little is known regarding whether this effect remains after long delays.…”

Understanding the relationship between repetition priming and mere exposure

“…Overall, there is currently too little evidence to make meaningful comparisons. To date, single studies using schizophrenic patients (Marie et al, 2001), the elderly (Wiggs, 1993), Korsakoff patients ( Johnson et al, 1985) and a prosopagnosic patient appear to be consistent with findings using repetition priming tasks, although two studies using Alzheimer's patients (Halpern & O'Connor, 2000;Winograd et al, 1999) have produced conflicting results.…”

“…The lack of mere exposure studies that have explored the effect with respect to the elderly ( Wiggs, 1993) and groups with neurological damage (e.g. Greve & Bauer, 1990;Johnson et al, 1985) stands in stark contrast to repetition priming where a sizeable literature has emerged from studies of the elderly (see, e.g.…”