Cognitive and neuropsychological underpinnings of relational and conjunctive working memory binding across age

Abstract

The ability to form associations (i.e., binding) is critical for memory formation. Recent studies suggest that aging specifically affects relational binding (associating separate features) but not conjunctive binding (integrating features within an object). Possibly, this dissociation may be driven by the spatial nature of the studies so far. Alternatively, relational binding may simply require more attentional resources. We assessed relational and conjunctive binding in three age groups and we included an interfering task (i.e., an articulatory suppression task). Binding was examined in a working memory (WM) task using non-spatial features: shape and colour. Thirty-one young adults (mean age = 22.35), 30 middle-aged adults (mean age = 54.80) and 30 older adults (mean age = 70.27) performed the task. Results show an effect of type of binding and an effect of age but no interaction between type of binding and age. The interaction between type of binding and interference was significant. These results indicate that aging affects relational binding and conjunctive binding similarly. However, relational binding is more susceptible to interference than conjunctive binding, which suggests that relational binding may require more attentional resources. We suggest that a general decline in WM resources associated with frontal dysfunction underlies age-related deficits in WM binding.

Differential age-related effects on conjunctive and relational visual short-term memory binding

“…Importantly, the current study demonstrates this differential age effect in a task in which all aspects of the procedure were identical across tasks except how objects and colours were related to each other, supporting the idea that this is the nature of the associations which is critical. However, the current findings contrast with those obtained in the other two reports that compared conjunctive and relational short-term binding in aging within the same study (Peterson & Naveh-Benjamin, 2016;van Geldorp et al, 2015). These studies additionally manipulated the presence of a concurrent task during short-term trials in order to assess susceptibility to reduction of attentional resources.…”

“…Interestingly, relational short-term binding requires more resources than conjunctive shortterm binding, as shown by greater disruption of performance due to the addition of a concurrent task in the former (van Geldorp et al, 2015). Of note, the current findings report aging effects that parallel the effects of a concurrent task on visual short-term binding tasks.…”

“…Indeed, while short-term memory for individual features and for conjunctive bindings are equally affected by a concurrent task Allen, Hitch, Mate, & Baddeley, 2012;Morey & Bieler, 2013), concurrent load effects are larger for relational short-term binding compared to short-term memory for single features (e.g., face-scene binding, Peterson & Naveh-Benjamin, 2017). Moreover, a direct comparison of divided attention effects on conjunctive and relational short-term binding indicated that conjunctive binding is less affected by a concurrent task, and thus can be processed more automatically, than relational binding (van Geldorp et al, 2015). Given that aging induces a reduction of attention resources, but leaves automatic memory processes better preserved, older participants benefit from task circumstances that provide support and limit the requirement in controlled processes (Craik, 1986).…”

“…In such circumstances, both age groups showed the same 6 binding performance profile (Brockmole et al, 2008;Brown & Brockmole, 2010;Peterson & Naveh-Benjamin, 2016). In the study by van Geldorp et al (2015), at retrieval, participants needed to recall studied associations by reconstructing pairings. As recall requests more resources than recognition (Craik, 1986), older participants may have been disadvantaged compared to young participants.…”

Frequency Effects on Memory: A Resource-Limited Theory

“…The first claim above is shared by a number of other researchers (Blumenfeld, Parks, Yonelinas, & Ranganath, 2010;Geldorp, Parra, & Kessels, 2015;Peterson & Naveh-Benjamin, 2017); however, to our knowledge it has not been implemented before into a mechanistic (i.e., computer implemented) model of memory. In contrast, the remaining claims about how stimulus familiarity affects WM resources are unique to our proposal (also see Reder et al, 2007).…”