Wahlheim Christopher N
Department of Psychology, Washington University, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, 63130, USA,
Mem Cognit. 2014 Aug;42(6):950-64. doi: 10.3758/s13421-014-0411-4.
Age-related deficits in episodic memory are sometimes attributed to older adults being more susceptible to proactive interference. These deficits have been explained by impaired abilities to inhibit competing information and to recollect target information. In the present article, I propose that a change recollection deficit also contributes to age differences in proactive interference. Change recollection occurs when individuals can remember how information changed across episodes, and this counteracts proactive interference by preserving the temporal order of information. Three experiments were conducted to determine whether older adults are less likely to counteract proactive interference by recollecting change. Paired-associate learning paradigms with two lists of word pairs included pairs that repeated across lists, pairs that only appeared in List 2 (control items), and pairs with cues that repeated and responses that changed across lists. Young and older adults' abilities to detect changed pairs in List 2 and to later recollect those changes at test were measured, along with cued recall of the List 2 responses and confidence in recall performance. Change recollection produced proactive facilitation in the recall of changed pairs, whereas the failure to recollect change resulted in proactive interference. Confidence judgments were sensitive to these effects. The critical finding was that older adults recollected change less than did young adults, and this partially explained older adults' greater susceptibility to proactive interference. These findings have theoretical implications, showing that a change recollection deficit contributes to age-related deficits in episodic memory.
情景记忆中与年龄相关的缺陷有时被归因于老年人更容易受到前摄干扰。这些缺陷可以通过抑制竞争信息和回忆目标信息的能力受损来解释。在本文中，我提出变化回忆缺陷也导致了前摄干扰中的年龄差异。当个体能够记住信息在不同情节中如何变化时，就会发生变化回忆，这通过保留信息的时间顺序来抵消前摄干扰。进行了三项实验，以确定老年人是否不太可能通过回忆变化来抵消前摄干扰。在配对联想学习范式中，有两组单词对，包括在两组中都重复的对、只出现在第二组中的对（对照项目），以及线索重复而反应在两组中变化的对。测量了年轻人和老年人在第二组中检测变化对的能力，以及之后在测试中回忆这些变化的能力，同时还测量了对第二组反应的线索回忆和回忆表现的信心。变化回忆在前摄促进对变化对的回忆中起作用，而未能回忆变化则导致前摄干扰。信心判断对这些效应很敏感。关键发现是，老年人回忆变化的能力比年轻人弱，这部分解释了老年人更容易受到前摄干扰的原因。这些发现具有理论意义，表明变化回忆缺陷导致了情景记忆中与年龄相关的缺陷。
