Badham Stephen P, Maylor Elizabeth A
Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK,
Psychon Bull Rev. 2015 Feb;22(1):141-6. doi: 10.3758/s13423-014-0672-8.
Stimuli related to an individual's knowledge/experience are often more memorable than abstract stimuli, particularly for older adults. This has been found when material that is congruent with knowledge is contrasted with material that is incongruent with knowledge, but there is little research on a possible graded effect of congruency. The present study manipulated the degree of congruency of study material with participants' knowledge. Young and older participants associated two famous names to nonfamous faces, where the similarity between the nonfamous faces and the real famous individuals varied. These associations were incrementally easier to remember as the name-face combinations became more congruent with prior knowledge, demonstrating a graded congruency effect, as opposed to an effect based simply on the presence or absence of associations to prior knowledge. Older adults tended to show greater susceptibility to the effect than young adults, with a significant age difference for extreme stimuli, in line with previous literature showing that schematic support in memory tasks particularly benefits older adults.
与个人知识/经验相关的刺激通常比抽象刺激更容易记忆，尤其是对老年人而言。当将与知识相符的材料与与知识不符的材料进行对比时，就会发现这一点，但关于一致性可能存在的分级效应的研究很少。本研究操纵了学习材料与参与者知识的一致程度。年轻和年长的参与者将两个著名人物的名字与不出名的面孔联系起来，其中不出名的面孔与真实著名人物之间的相似度各不相同。随着名字-面孔组合与先前知识的一致性越来越高，这些联系逐渐变得更容易记忆，这表明存在分级一致性效应，而不是仅仅基于与先前知识有无联系的效应。与年轻人相比，老年人往往对这种效应更敏感，极端刺激下存在显著的年龄差异，这与之前的文献一致，该文献表明记忆任务中的图式支持对老年人尤其有益。
