Effect of aging differs for memory of object identity and object position within a spatial context

Abstract

There has been considerable focus on investigating age-related memory changes in cognitively healthy older adults, in the absence of neurodegenerative disorders. Previous studies have reported age-related domain-specific changes in older adults, showing increased difficulty encoding and processing object information but minimal to no impairment in processing spatial information compared with younger adults. However, few of these studies have examined age-related changes in the encoding of concurrently presented object and spatial stimuli, specifically the integration of both spatial and nonspatial (object) information. To more closely resemble real-life memory encoding and the integration of both spatial and nonspatial information, the current study developed a new experimental paradigm with novel environments that allowed for the placement of different objects in different positions within the environment. The results show that older adults have decreased performance in recognizing changes of the object position within the spatial context but no significant differences in recognizing changes in the identity of the object within the spatial context compared with younger adults. These findings suggest there may be potential age-related differences in the mechanisms underlying the representations of complex environments and furthermore, the integration of spatial and nonspatial information may be differentially processed relative to independent and isolated representations of object and spatial information.

Human memory for real-world solid objects is not predicted by responses to image displays.

“…For example, the perception of reachable space surrounding the body can be extended, or “remapped,” following motor training with a real tool, but the same does not happen after motor training with a virtual reality tool (Ferroni et al, 2022). The effect of realness on memory advances various translational predictions, including that real objects may be preferable to pictures for facilitating learning and memory in the classroom (Strouse & Ganea, 2021), for maximizing sensitivity in neuropsychological evaluations (Beaucage et al, 2020; Hampstead et al, 2010), and perhaps for facilitating performance in individuals for whom memory function is disrupted due to brain injury (Sirigu et al, 1991), developmental disorder (Humphreys & Riddoch, 1999), natural aging (Tran et al, 2021), or neurodegenerative conditions (Clemenson & Stark, 2015). Our protocols demonstrate how real-world stimuli can be used in experimental contexts to maximize ecological validity without sacrificing experimental control (Romero & Snow, 2019).…”

Demands on perceptual and mnemonic fidelity are a key determinant of age-related cognitive decline throughout the lifespan.

“…Because our paradigm uses stimulus displays with trial-unique everyday objects rather than minimalistic shape stimuli typically used in working memory analog tasks (Manga et al, 2021; Pertzov et al, 2015; Zokaei, Čepukaitytė, et al, 2019), it closely matches encoding demands and perceptual features across short and long delays (see also Korkki et al, 2020; Lugtmeijer et al, 2019; Rhodes et al, 2020), allowing us to compare memory performance in STM and LTM versions of the task. Moreover, memory processes underpinning the recall of object and object-location information, respectively, are only partially overlapping (Clark et al, 2017; Cooper & Ritchey, 2019; Stark et al, 2019; Stevenson et al, 2020; Wais et al, 2018) and are differently affected by age (Bouffard et al, 2023; Tran et al, 2021). Therefore, incorporating measures for the fidelity of object and object-location recall allows for a comparison of age effects on the precision of both types of representations and makes it possible to test for an association between fidelity of item recognition and source memory from the same encoding period (Kim & Yassa, 2013; Richter, 2020).…”