Van Gerven Pascal W M, Meijer Willemien A, Jolles Jelle
Maastricht University, Faculty of Psychology, Department of Neurocognition, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Brain Cogn. 2007 Jul;64(2):158-63. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2007.02.005. Epub 2007 Mar 29.
In this experimental study, effects of age and education on switching focal attention in working memory were investigated among 44 young (20-30 years) and 40 middle-aged individuals (50-60 years). To this end, a numeric n-back task comprising two lag conditions (1- and 2-back) was administered within groups. The results revealed a comparable increase of reaction time as a function of lag across age groups, but a disproportionate decrease of accuracy in the middle-aged relative to the young group. The latter effect did not interact with education, which challenges the cognitive reserve hypothesis. Moreover, the high-educated middle-aged participants showed a greater increase of reaction time as a function of lag than their low-educated counterparts. Apparently, they were not able to sustain their relatively high response speed across conditions. These results suggest that education does not protect against age-related decline of switching focal attention in working memory.
在这项实验研究中，对44名年轻（20 - 30岁）和40名中年（50 - 60岁）个体进行了年龄和教育程度对工作记忆中注意力转换影响的调查。为此，在组内实施了包含两种延迟条件（1 - 和2 - 回溯）的数字n - 回溯任务。结果显示，各年龄组的反应时间随延迟的增加具有可比性，但中年组相对于年轻组的准确性下降不成比例。后一种效应与教育程度无关，这对认知储备假说提出了挑战。此外，高学历中年参与者的反应时间随延迟的增加幅度比低学历参与者更大。显然，他们无法在各种条件下保持相对较高的反应速度。这些结果表明，教育并不能防止工作记忆中注意力转换的年龄相关衰退。
