Working memory and aging: Separating the effects of content and context.

Bopp, Kara L.; Verhaeghen, Paul

doi:10.1037/a0017731

Cited by 31 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…The difficulty in obtaining evidence for an agerelated binding deficit for colour-shape conjunctions stands in stark contrast to the ubiquity of the associative deficit in memory for relations between items (Chen & Naveh-Benjamin, 2012;Old & Naveh-Benjamin, 2008a) in VWM (Cowan et al, 2006;Mitchell, Johnson, Raye, Mather, & D'Esposito, 2000;Peich et al, 2013), although this has proven less consistent (Bopp & Verhaeghen, 2009;Olson et al, 2004;Pertzov et al, 2015). In attempting to explain this disparity it is useful to draw a distinction between binding features within items, where the features define the intrinsic characteristics of an object, and retaining pairings of distinct items or contextual features accompanying an item, where the binding is between extrinsic features.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

Ageing and Feature Binding in Visual Working Memory: The Role of Presentation Time

Rhodes

Parra

Logie

2016

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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A large body of research has clearly demonstrated that healthy ageing is accompanied by an associative memory deficit. Older adults exhibit disproportionately poor performance on memory tasks requiring the retention of associations between items (e.g., pairs of unrelated words). In contrast to this robust deficit, older adults' ability to form and temporarily hold bound representations of an object's surface features, such as colour and shape, appears to be relatively well preserved. However, the findings of one set of experiments suggest that older adults may struggle to form temporary bound representations in visual working memory when given more time to study objects. However, these findings were based on between-participant comparisons across experimental paradigms. The present study directly assesses the role of presentation time in the ability of younger and older adults to bind shape and colour in visual working memory using a within-participant design. We report new evidence that giving older adults longer to study memory objects does not differentially affect their immediate memory for feature combinations relative to individual features. This is in line with a growing body of research suggesting that there is no age-related impairment in immediate memory for colour-shape binding.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

Ageing and Feature Binding in Visual Working Memory: The Role of Presentation Time

Rhodes

Parra

Logie

2016

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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“…Previous studies have shown that older adults’ performance in a variety of working memory tasks is poorer than younger adults’ (Bopp & Verhaeghen, 2009; Brockmole et al, 2008; Cowan et al, 2006; Mitchell et al, 2000; Parra, Abrahams, Logie, et al, 2009; Sander et al, 2011a). These studies have mostly attributed the deficit to a decrease in the number of objects that can be held in memory.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Age-related decline of precision and binding in visual working memory.

Peich¹,

Husain²,

Bays³

2013

Psychology and Aging

127

153

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Working memory declines with normal aging, but the nature of this impairment is debated. Studies based on detecting changes to arrays of visual objects have identified two possible components to age-related decline: a reduction in the number of items that can be stored, or a deficit in maintaining the associations (bindings) between individual object features. However, some investigations have reported intact binding with aging, and specific deficits arising only in Alzheimer’s disease. Here, using a recently developed continuous measure of recall fidelity, we tested the precision with which adults of different ages could reproduce from memory the orientation and color of a probed array item. The results reveal a further component of cognitive decline: an age-related decrease in the resolution with which visual information can be maintained in working memory. This increase in recall variability with age was strongest under conditions of greater memory load. Moreover, analysis of the distribution of errors revealed that older participants were more likely to incorrectly report one of the unprobed items in memory, consistent with an age-related increase in misbinding. These results indicate a systematic decline with age in working memory resources that can be recruited to store visual information. The paradigm presented here provides a sensitive index of both memory resolution and feature binding, with the potential for assessing their modulation by interventions. The findings have implications for understanding the mechanisms underpinning working memory deficits in both health and disease.

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“…In such blocking, the associative test no longer blends into the study events in comparison to the more salient item tests, which spatially look very different; in the associative block, the associative tests have only the study events with which to contrast. Of note, one commonality among experiments that do not find an associative deficit in working memory is that they all use a blocked test design, where the item test and associative test events are not intermixed (Bopp & Verhaeghen, 2009;Brockmole et al, 2008). Therefore, to investigate whether the associative deficit in older adults found in Experiment 1 in the short-term retention interval was due to the differential salience of tiie test events, we blocked tiie test type in Experiment 2 in addition to having a mixed test condition.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Assessing the associative deficit of older adults in long-term and short-term/working memory.

Chen¹,

Naveh–Benjamin²

2012

Psychology and Aging

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Older adults exhibit a deficit in associative long-term memory relative to younger adults. However, the literature is inconclusive regarding whether this deficit is attenuated in short-term/working memory. To elucidate the issue, three experiments assessed younger and older adults' item and interitem associative memory and the effects of several variables that might potentially contribute to the inconsistent pattern of results in previous studies. In Experiment 1, participants were tested on item and associative recognition memory with both long-term and short-term retention intervals in a single, continuous recognition paradigm. There was an associative deficit for older adults in the short-term and long-term intervals. Using only short-term intervals, Experiment 2 utilized mixed and blocked test designs to examine the effect of test event salience. Blocking the test did not attenuate the age-related associative deficit seen in the mixed test blocks. Finally, an age-related associative deficit was found in Experiment 3, under both sequential and simultaneous presentation conditions. Even while accounting for some methodological issues, the associative deficit of older adults is evident in short-term/working memory.

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Working memory and aging: Separating the effects of content and context.

Cited by 31 publications

References 37 publications

Ageing and Feature Binding in Visual Working Memory: The Role of Presentation Time

Ageing and Feature Binding in Visual Working Memory: The Role of Presentation Time

Age-related decline of precision and binding in visual working memory.

Assessing the associative deficit of older adults in long-term and short-term/working memory.

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