Department of Medicine, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn. 2013;20(1):80-100. doi: 10.1080/13825585.2012.672948. Epub 2012 Apr 10.
This is a study on prospective memory (PM) and the PM interference effect in normal and pathological aging. One hundred and seven subjects, including 41 healthy young adults, 40 non-demented older adults and 26 patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) participated in this study using a laboratory event-based PM task. PM task performance was comparable between the non-demented older and young adults, but impaired in the AD patients. The PM interference effect increased progressively from the healthy young adults, the non-demented older adults, to the AD patients. Path analysis revealed that the possible mechanism mediating the increased PM interference was the slow motor processing speed in normal aging, while it was the slow verbal speed in pathological aging. It is suggested that different neuropsychological mechanisms may underpin the affected performance of PM task in normal and pathological aging.
这是一项关于正常和病理性衰老中的前瞻性记忆（PM）和 PM 干扰效应的研究。本研究采用实验室基于事件的 PM 任务，共纳入 107 名受试者，包括 41 名健康的年轻成年人、40 名非痴呆的老年成年人和 26 名轻度阿尔茨海默病（AD）患者。结果显示，非痴呆的老年成年人和年轻成年人的 PM 任务表现相当，但 AD 患者的 PM 任务表现受损。PM 干扰效应从健康的年轻成年人、非痴呆的老年成年人到 AD 患者逐渐增加。路径分析表明，在正常衰老中，介导 PM 干扰增加的可能机制是较慢的运动加工速度，而在病理性衰老中，则是较慢的言语速度。研究结果提示，在正常和病理性衰老中，可能存在不同的神经心理学机制来影响 PM 任务的表现。
