Zheng Zhiwei, Li Juan, Xiao Fengqiu, Broster Lucas S, Jiang Yang
Center on Aging Psychology, Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
Center on Aging Psychology, Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Center, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2015 May;121:59-71. doi: 10.1016/j.nlm.2015.03.006. Epub 2015 Apr 6.
Normal aging is associated with greater decline in associative memory relative to item memory due to impaired recollection. Familiarity may also contribute to associative recognition when stimuli are perceived as a 'unitized' representation. Given that familiarity is relatively preserved in older adults, we explored whether age-related associative memory deficits could be attenuated when associations were unitized (i.e., compounds) compared with those non-unitized (i.e., unrelated word pairs). Young and older adults performed an associative recognition task while electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. Behavioral results showed that age differences were smaller for recognition of compounds than for unrelated word pairs. ERP results indicated that only compounds evoked an early frontal old/new effect in older adults. Moreover, the early frontal old/new effect was positively correlated with associative discrimination accuracy. These findings suggest that reduced age-related associative deficits under unitized condition may be associated with the presence of familiarity-based retrieval of compounds in older adults.
由于回忆受损，正常衰老与联想记忆相对于项目记忆的更大衰退相关。当刺激被视为“统一”表征时，熟悉度也可能有助于联想识别。鉴于老年人的熟悉度相对得以保留，我们探究了与年龄相关的联想记忆缺陷在联想被统一化（即复合词）时是否比未被统一化（即不相关词对）时有所减轻。年轻和年长成年人在进行联想识别任务的同时记录脑电图（EEG）。行为结果表明，对于复合词识别的年龄差异小于不相关词对识别的年龄差异。事件相关电位（ERP）结果表明，只有复合词在年长成年人中诱发了早期额叶新旧效应。此外，早期额叶新旧效应与联想辨别准确性呈正相关。这些发现表明，在统一化条件下与年龄相关的联想缺陷减少可能与年长成年人基于熟悉度的复合词检索有关。
