Hartman Marilyn, Warren Lauren H
Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3270, USA.
Psychol Aging. 2005 Dec;20(4):645-56. doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.20.4.645.
To determine the cognitive mechanisms underlying age differences in temporal working memory (WM), the authors examined the contributions of item memory, associative memory, simple order memory, and multiple item memory, using parallel versions of the delayed-matching-to-sample task. Older adults performed more poorly than younger adults on tests of temporal memory, but there were no age differences in nonassociative item memory, regardless of the amount of information to be learned. In contrast, a combination of associative and simple order memory, both of which were reduced in older adults, completely accounted for age-related declines in temporal memory. The authors conclude that 2 mechanisms may underlie age differences in temporal WM, namely, a generalized decline in associative ability and a specific difficulty with order information.
为了确定时间工作记忆（WM）中年龄差异背后的认知机制，作者使用延迟匹配样本任务的平行版本，研究了项目记忆、联想记忆、简单顺序记忆和多项目记忆的作用。在时间记忆测试中，老年人的表现比年轻人差，但在非联想项目记忆方面不存在年龄差异，无论要学习的信息量多少。相比之下，老年人的联想记忆和简单顺序记忆均有所下降，这两者共同作用完全解释了与年龄相关的时间记忆衰退。作者得出结论，时间工作记忆中的年龄差异可能基于两种机制，即联想能力的普遍下降和顺序信息处理方面的特定困难。
