Working memory in the oldest-old: evidence from output serial position curves

Abstract

We examined adult age differences in short-term and working memory performance in middle-aged (45–64 years), young-old (65–74 years), old-old (75–89 years) and oldest-old adults (90 years and over) in the Louisiana Healthy Aging Study. Previous research suggests that measures of working memory are more sensitive to age effects than simple tests of short-term memory (Bopp & Verhaeghen, 2005; Myerson, Emery, White, & Hale, 2003). To test this hypothesis, we examined output serial position curves of recall data from three span tasks: forward and backward digit span and size judgment span. Participants’ recall patterns in the size judgment span task revealed that the two oldest groups of adults showed the largest decreases in recall performance across output serial positions, but did not differ significantly from each other. Correlation analyses indicated the strongest negative correlation with age occurred with the size judgment span task. Implications of these findings for understanding strategic processing abilities in late life are discussed.

Naturalistic Assessment of Everyday Memory Performance Among Older Adults

“…More specifically, the observed age-related difference in the laboratory memory tasks is in line with previous studies on STM measures (Elliott et al, 2011;Hale et al, 2011). A significant age-related difference was also shown in the EDL tasks (for both scorings).…”

“…This also involves agerelated changes in STM capacity. Performances decrements of older adults are especially evident in STM tasks, in which information has to be manipulated or kept in mind while processing further information (Elliott et al, 2011;Hale et al, 2011). Memory tasks, which require an individual to simultaneously store and actively transform information (Baddeley, 2000), tap a memory system that is called working memory.…”

“…They found an age-related difference in cognitive abilities such as perceptual speed, working memory, spatial ability, episodic memory, and reasoning, as well as an age-related stability in everyday life (EDL) performance (job performance). One explanation for this stable or superior performance in old age could be the usage of acquired knowledge, strategies, or an individually developed retrieval structure for information stored in long-term memory (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995) that could especially compensate agerelated deficits in short-term memory performance (Elliott et al, 2011;Hale et al, 2011). However, the dissociation between simple laboratory measures and real-life performance as a function of age is sparsely investigated except for the work of Rendell and colleagues (Rendell & Craik, 2000;Rendell & Thomson, 1999;Rose, Rendell, McDaniel, Aberle, & Kliegel, 2010;Schnitzspahn, Ihle, Henry, Rendell, & Kliegel, 2011) on the "age-prospective memory paradox."…”

A randomized trial of cognitive rehabilitation in cancer survivors

“…Backward digit span is often considered a working memory task as well as a task of attention (Elliott et al, 2011). Working memory can be described as our mental scratchpad.…”

The intensity of menopausal symptoms is associated with episodic memory in postmenopausal women

“…Moreover, the menopausal transition is associated with increased vulnerability to cognitive impairment 6 . Spatial abilities of working memory have been identified to decrease with aging, an alteration starting to occur even at the sixth decade of life 7,8 . Additionally, certain cognitive domains of verbal memory seem to be affected by the menopausal transition 9 , while the effect of aging on visuospatial working memory seems to be even more pronounced compared to verbal memory 10 .…”