Controlled and Automatic Forms of Memory and Attention: Process Purity and the Uniqueness of Age-Related Influences

Abstract

Estimates of controlled and automatic processes hypothesized to underlie performance in a memory task and in an attention task were derived for 1 15 participants from 18 to 78 years of age using the process-dissociation procedure. Participants also performed speed and neuropsychological tests that were suspected to he negatively rclated to age. Process estimates showed good reliabilfu (from .76 to .98), and the qualintive distinction between processes t'as supported by the overall pattern of conelations an ong measures. However, only estimated automatic processes exhibited unique variance, as they were either weakly related or unrelated both to performance on the other tests and to each other. Estimates of the control processes, in contrast, shared considerable variance with measures from other tests, and there were no unique, or independent, age-related effects on these measures. The results highlight the need to distinguish between process purity and the uniqueness of age-related influences in accounting for age differe nc e s in c ognition.

Contributions of the Individual Differences Approach to Cognitive Aging

“…(Sliwinski, Hofer, & Hall, 2003, p. 672) Because age differences on different target measures can vary in magnitude, perhaps as manifested in the form of an interaction of condition and measure in an analysis of variance, the age-related effects are sometimes assumed to be specific for certain cognitive measures. However, it is important to distinguish differential magnitude from uniqueness of age relations when referring to age-related effects (e.g., Salthouse & Coon, 1994;Salthouse, Toth, Hancock, & Woodard, 1997). That is, the critical question from an individual differences perspective is not whether age relations on different target measures vary in magnitude, because this could occur for variety of reasons, such as variation in reliability, or differential dependence on a common resource or factor.…”

Simon says: Reliability and the role of working memory and attentional control in the Simon task

“…Despite the rather large literature, we are unaware of any investigations of the reliability of the Simon effect within subjects across blocks of trials (but see Salthouse et al, 1997, for a different kind of reliability assessment). The present experiment examines the reliability of the Simon effect across blocks of trials as a function of compatibility proportion (i.e., .25 vs. .50 vs. .75).…”

“…Furthermore, its assessment is critical to research in many fields of psychology-for example, to studies of semantic processes in visual word recognition (Stolz, Besner, & Carr, 2005), of aging and memory (Buchner & Wippich, 2000;Salthouse & Siedlecki, 2005;Salthouse, Toth, Hancock, & Woodard, 1997), and of aging and cognitive performance (Madden, Pierce, & Allen, 1993). Determining the reliability of a cognitive process over time is thus part of a complete understanding of how that process functions.…”

Neuropsychological correlates of recollection and familiarity in normal aging

“…The evidence concerning familiarity, on the other hand, is equivocal. Many PDP studies have reported no effect of aging on the measure of familiarity (Hay & Jacoby, 1999;Jennings & Jacoby, 1993Salthouse et al, 1997;Titov & Knight, 1997), but other studies have found reduced familiarity with age (Light et al, 1999;Rybash et al, 1998;SchmitterEdgecombe, 1999). Individual differences among older adults with respect to brain aging may explain the mixed findings regarding familiarity in the literature on aging.…”

“…Scarrabelotti and Carroll (1999) found correlations between recollection and both Stroop performance and California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT) semantic clustering (Delis, Kramer, Kaplan, & Ober, 1987), two measures thought to reflect executive function. Salthouse et al (1997) found a relationship between recollection and two other measures of FL function, phonemic fluency and trail making (Reitan, 1992), although recollection was also correlated with performance on other tests not strongly associated with FLprocesses, including letter and pattern comparison and vocabulary.…”