Do young and older adults rely on different processes in source memory tasks? A neuropsychological study.

Abstract

Source memory has consistently been associated with prefrontal function both in normal and clinical populations. Nevertheless, the exact contribution of prefrontal cortex to source memory remains uncertain, and evidence suggests that processes engaged by young and older adults may differ. We explored the extent to which composite measures of frontal and medial temporal function differentially predicted the performance of young and older adults on source memory tasks. Results indicated that the frontal composite, which has consistently been associated with source memory performance in older adults, was unrelated to source memory in young adults, although it was sensitive to a demanding working memory task. The memory composite, however, predicted performance in the young group. In addition, item and source memory were correlated in young people but not in older people. Findings are discussed in terms of age-related differences in working memory and executive functions, and differential binding processes necessary for item and source memory. The requirement to integrate item and source information at encoding appears to place greater demands on executive or working memory processes in older adults than in younger.Keywords source memory; neuropsychology; frontal function; young adults; older adults Although source memory was initially defined narrowly as memory for the origin of information, more recently the construct has been used broadly to include any aspects of context associated with an event, including spatiotemporal, perceptual or affective attributes (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993). Distinctions between content and context, however, are not straightforward, often depending on situational factors or an individual's goals. For these reasons, source has often been defined operationally in terms of the mapping between items and sources and experimenter instructions. In most experimental studies of source memory, there is a many-to-few mapping of items to sources: many sentences spoken in two voices, many concepts perceived or imagined, many objects in two locations or colors, or many words in one of two lists (e.g., Davidson & Glisky, 2002;Dodson & Shimamura, 2000;Glisky, Polster & Routhieaux, 1995;Henkel, Johnson, & DeLeonardis, 1998;Kuo & Van Petten, 2006). The many different stimuli (e.g., sentences) are defined as content, whereas the repeating aspects (e.g., two different voices) are defined as source or context. In addition, instructions or orienting tasks usually focus people's attention on the central content or item (cf., Chalfonte & Johnson, 1996). Notably, the type of materials need not define item and source; rather the nature of the task and instructions conveys such information. Thus, for example, if people hear many voices Send correspondence to: Elizabeth L. Glisky, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, 1503 E. University Blvd., University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, Email: glisky@u.arizona NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript speaking one of t...

Functional phenotyping of successful aging in long‐term memory: Preserved performance in the absence of neural compensation

“…One prevailing hypothesis is that a major source of impairment of encoding in older adults is caused by deficient cognitive control processes mediated by prefrontal and parietal regions and include the failure to inhibit irrelevant information (Gazzaley and D'Esposito, 2007;Gazzaley et al, 2008;Stevens et al, 2008) or utilize contextual distinctiveness (Mantyla and Backman, 1990;Mantyla and Craik, 1993) and source information (Dennis et al, 2008;Old and Naveh-Benjamin, 2008). For instance, it has been suggested that the requirement to integrate item and source information at encoding, a prerequisite for successful episodic memory formation, may place greater demands on prefrontal executive or working memory processes in older adults than in younger adults and this may pose a limit for episodic memory performance (Glisky and Kong, 2008). According to this hypothesis, functional underrecruitment of MTL and visual brain regions during encoding, that is a high FADE score, could be caused by structural degeneration outside the MTL, most notably in prefrontal or parietal brain regions.…”

Fluid mechanics moderate the effect of implementation intentions on a health prospective memory task in older adults

“…Moreover, this result qualifies the finding from McFarland and Glisky (2011) and is in line with their initial conceptual expectations. They assumed, based on former research, that cognitively high functioning participants in the control condition would have spontaneously developed more specific plans (McFarland and Glisky 2009) and created a stronger link between cue and intention (Glisky et al 1995(Glisky et al , 2001Glisky and Kong 2008) than did cognitively low functioning participants in the control condition. Given the different prospective memory tasks used in the study from McFarland and Glisky (2011) and in the current one, it is plausible to assume that it was easier to spontaneously develop specific plans and strong cue-action associations for high functioning participants in the control condition in the present study as participants exactly knew the environment and the general circumstances from the situation where they were going to execute the intended action.…”

The influence of complex working memory span task administration methods on prediction of higher level cognition and metacognitive control of response times

“…The executive function factor was based on a battery developed by Glisky, Polster, and Routhieaux (1995) that has been used to measure executive functioning in previous research (Glisky & Kong, 2008;McCabe et al, 2010;Van Petten et al, 2004). The Wisconsin card sorting task (WCST) requires participants to sort cards on the computer on the basis of one of three dimensions, according to a rule that changes after every 10 correct trials (Heaton, 1993).…”