Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2013 Mar;68(2):224-7. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbs039. Epub 2012 Mar 26.
The main purpose of the study was to examine whether emotion impairs associative memory for previously seen items in older adults, as previously observed in younger adults.
Thirty-two younger adults and 32 older adults participated. The experiment consisted of 2 parts. In Part 1, participants learned picture-object associations for negative and neutral pictures. In Part 2, they learned picture-location associations for negative and neutral pictures; half of these pictures were seen in Part 1 whereas the other half were new. The dependent measure was how many locations of negative versus neutral items in the new versus old categories participants remembered in Part 2.
Both groups had more difficulty learning the locations of old negative pictures than of new negative pictures. However, this pattern was not observed for neutral items.
Despite the fact that older adults showed overall decline in associative memory, the impairing effect of emotion on updating associative memory was similar between younger and older adults.
本研究的主要目的是检验情绪是否会损害老年人对先前见过的项目的联想记忆，就像在年轻人中观察到的那样。
32 名年轻成年人和 32 名老年成年人参与了实验。实验分为两部分。在第一部分中，参与者学习了负性和中性图片的图片-物体联想。在第二部分中，他们学习了负性和中性图片的图片-位置联想；这些图片中有一半在第一部分中见过，另一半是新的。因变量是参与者在第二部分中记住新类别和旧类别中负性与中性项目的位置数量。
两组人在学习旧负性图片的位置时都比学习新负性图片的位置更困难。然而，中性项目并没有表现出这种模式。
尽管老年人的联想记忆整体下降，但情绪对更新联想记忆的损害作用在年轻人和老年人之间是相似的。
