Department of Psychological Sciences, University ofMissouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
Psychol Aging. 2012 Sep;27(3):666-82. doi: 10.1037/a0026943. Epub 2012 Feb 6.
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.
老年人在联想性长期记忆方面表现出相对于年轻人的缺陷。然而，关于这种缺陷是否在短期/工作记忆中减弱，文献尚无定论。为了解决这个问题，三个实验评估了年轻人和老年人的项目和项目间联想记忆，以及可能导致之前研究结果不一致的几个变量的影响。在实验 1 中，参与者在单个连续识别范式中接受了长期和短期保留间隔的项目和联想识别记忆测试。老年人在短期和长期间隔中都存在联想缺陷。实验 2 仅使用短期间隔，采用混合和分组测试设计来检验测试事件显著性的影响。分组测试并不能减轻混合测试分组中观察到的与年龄相关的联想缺陷。最后，实验 3 发现，在顺序和同时呈现条件下，老年人都存在与年龄相关的联想缺陷。即使考虑到一些方法学问题，老年人的联想缺陷在短期/工作记忆中也很明显。
