The rate of source memory decline across the adult life span.

Abstract

Previous studies have suggested that the ability to remember contextual information related to specific episodic experiences declines with advancing age; however, the exact moment in the adult life span when this deficit begins is still controversial. Source memory for spatial information was tested in a life span sample of 1,500 adults between the ages of 21 and 80. Initially, images of common objects were randomly presented on one quadrant of a screen while the participants judged whether they were natural or artificial. During the retrieval phase, these same images were mixed with new ones, and all images were displayed in the center of the screen. The participants were asked to judge whether each image was new or old, and whether it was old, to indicate in which quadrant of the screen it had originally been presented. Source accuracy decreased linearly with advancing age at a rate of 0.6% per year across all decades even after controlling for educational level; this decline was unaffected by sex. These results reveal that either spatial information becomes less efficiently bound to episodic representations over time or that the ability to retrieve this information decreases gradually throughout the adult life span.

Fluency affects source memory for familiar names in younger and older adults: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

“…such as an item was presented visually or auditorily during learningWilding, Doyle, & Rugg, 1995). Importantly for the present study, previous research suggests that source memory is substantially reduced in older adults (Anderson & Craik, 2000;Cansino et al, 2013;Spencer & Raz, 1995).…”

The decline of verbal and visuospatial working memory across the adult life span

“…Notably, sex separately interacted with each of these factors and with decade, indicating that it has an effect on working memory decline. This effect was shown to be completely absent in other types of memory, such as episodic memory (Cansino et al 2012). Although the comparison across decades revealed that the age at which significant declines in working memory occurred was dependent on the domain, the difficulty of the task, and the sex of the individual, the regression analyses demonstrated that discrimination declined across all of the adult life span, indicating that there is not a specific time point in adulthood when working memory starts to decline.…”

“…For men, discrimination decreased significantly in the third decade for the verbal and 2-back tasks, in the forth decade for the visuospatial tasks, and in the seventh decade for the 1-back tasks. Remarkably, the proportion of variance of working memory decline explained by age across the adult life span does not exceed 14 %; this proportion is half of that explained by age for other types of memory, such as episodic memory (Cansino et al 2012). This indicates that several other factors must be examined to further explain the changes that occur in working memory with advancing age.…”

“…The second session took place in a sound-dampened chamber, approximately 1 week after the first session. In this session, participants performed the working memory tasks and a source memory task (data published by Cansino et al 2012). Participants performed the tasks while seated in a high-back armchair located 100 cm away from the monitor screen.…”

Aktywność fizyczna a kondycja psychiczna osób starszych

“…Podobnie, pogarszanie się pamięci epizodycznej, zależnej m.in. od hipokampa, w zakresie wydobywania kontekstowych detali wspomnień wydarzeń, również uznaje się za funkcję wieku (Cansino et al, 2013). Ponadto stwierdzono, że z wiekiem łagodnie pogarszają się funkcje pamięci topograficznej i chronologii oraz rozpoznawania wzrokowego (Gras et al, 2012).…”