Verbal Learning and Aging: Combined Effects of Irrelevant Speech, Interstimulus Interval, and Education

Meijer, Willemien A.; Groot, Renate H. M. de; Boxtel, M.P.J. van; Gerven, Pascal W. M. Van; Jolles, Jelle

doi:10.1093/geronb/61.5.p285

Cited by 24 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Consistent with this, Chao and Knight (1997) showed that multiple auditory tone distractors presented during a 9 sec or longer, but not shorter, delay interval did indeed generate worse auditory WM in older adults. Meijer et al (2006) showed similar findings using a sequence of auditory distractions, presented either rapidly or slowly, with greater age-related impacts on WM observed for the more challenging rapid distractor presentations. These studies raise the possibility that higher interference loads in the form of greater number of interfering stimuli, greater stimulus congruity and hence confusability between the WM and interference stimuli, and greater complexity of the interference task may indeed show differentially greater impacts on WM performance in older relative to younger adults.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 60%

Comparable mechanisms of working memory interference by auditory and visual motion in youth and aging

et al. 2013

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Intrasensory interference during visual working memory (WM) maintenance by object stimuli (such as faces and scenes), has been shown to negatively impact WM performance, with greater detrimental impacts of interference observed in aging. Here we assessed age-related impacts by intrasensory WM interference from lower-level stimulus features such as visual and auditory motion stimuli. We consistently found that interference in the form of ignored distractions and secondary task i nterruptions presented during a WM maintenance period, degraded memory accuracy in both the visual and auditory domain. However, in contrast to prior studies assessing WM for visual object stimuli, feature-based interference effects were not observed to be significantly greater in older adults. Analyses of neural oscillations in the alpha frequency band further revealed preserved mechanisms of interference processing in terms of post-stimulus alpha suppression, which was observed maximally for secondary task interruptions in visual and auditory modalities in both younger and older adults. These results suggest that age-related sensitivity of WM to interference may be limited to complex object stimuli, at least at low WM loads.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 60%

Comparable mechanisms of working memory interference by auditory and visual motion in youth and aging

et al. 2013

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“…Nevertheless, an interaction between age and the level of interference might emerge if task complexity is systematically increased. Meijer et al (2006), for instance, found greater disruptive effects of background speech on verbal learning in older than in young individuals if they decreased the time interval between words in the encoding phase of a verbal learning task.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An early study by Molander and Bäckman (1990) with very few participants (six young and six older adults) revealed that motor performance of older people is more affected by verbal than nonverbal noise, whereas motor performance of younger adults is equally affected by the two types of noise. Meijer, De Groot, Van Boxtel, Van Gerven, and Jolles (2006) found episodic memory of older adults to be more affected by irrelevant speech only after decreasing the interstimulus interval in a verbal learning task. In most studies, however, no interaction was found between noise and age.…”

mentioning

confidence: 88%

The Irrelevant Speech Effect and the Level of Interference in Aging

Gerven¹,

Meijer²,

Vermeeren³

et al. 2007

Experimental Aging Research

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In general, no disproportionate detrimental effects of irrelevant background speech on cognition are found in aging individuals, although this is predicted by the inhibitory view of aging. This may be due to the nature of the primary task (most studies involve a verbal learning task) or the cognitive level at which irrelevant speech interferes with this task. In this study, the irrelevant speech effect on a numeric working memory task was investigated among 20 young (M = 21.8 years) and 20 older (M = 68.1 years) native Dutch individuals. Level of interference (LOI) was manipulated by presenting white noise (no interference), Russian words (low interference), Dutch words (phonological interference), and Dutch numbers (semantic interference) in the background. Results showed that reaction time increases as a function of LOI relative to silence, whereas accuracy remains unaffected. However, no interaction between LOI and age group was found, which suggests that the elderly were not disproportionately affected by an increased level of interference. These results are discussed in the light of the inhibitory view of aging.

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“…Pilot testing indicated that older adults required a longer processing time than younger adults for this task, and the inter stimulus interval (ISI) was increased to 1500 ms ( Wong and Perrachione, 2007 ). Longer ISIs have been shown to be more beneficial for older than younger adults ( Meijer et al, 2006 ), thought to be due to reduced speed of processing in older adults. Performance on the PCPT has been linked to Mandarin lexical tone learning performance in younger adults ( Wong and Perrachione, 2007 ; Chandrasekaran et al, 2010 ; Perrachione et al, 2011 ; Ingvalson et al, 2013 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-native Speech Learning in Older Adults

et al. 2017

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Though there is an extensive literature investigating the ability of younger adults to learn non-native phonology, including investigations into individual differences in younger adults’ lexical tone learning, very little is known about older adults’ ability to learn non-native phonology, including lexical tone. There are several reasons to suspect that older adults would use different learning mechanisms when learning lexical tone than younger adults, including poorer perception of dynamic pitch, greater reliance on working memory capacity in second language learning, and poorer category learning in older adulthood. The present study examined the relationships among older adults’ baseline sensitivity for pitch patterns, working memory capacity, and declarative memory capacity with their ability to learn to associate tone with lexical meaning. In older adults, baseline pitch pattern sensitivity was not associated with generalization performance. Rather, older adults’ learning performance was best predicted by declarative memory capacity. These data suggest that training paradigms will need to be modified to optimize older adults’ non-native speech sound learning success.

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Verbal Learning and Aging: Combined Effects of Irrelevant Speech, Interstimulus Interval, and Education

Cited by 24 publications

References 43 publications

Comparable mechanisms of working memory interference by auditory and visual motion in youth and aging

Comparable mechanisms of working memory interference by auditory and visual motion in youth and aging

The Irrelevant Speech Effect and the Level of Interference in Aging

Non-native Speech Learning in Older Adults

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