School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
School of Psychology, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia.
PLoS One. 2015 Apr 20;10(4):e0125124. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0125124. eCollection 2015.
Some studies have found that prospective memory (PM) cues which are emotionally valenced influence age effects in prospective remembering, but it remains unclear whether this effect reflects the operation of processes implemented at encoding or retrieval. In addition, none of the prior ageing studies of valence on PM function have examined potential costs of engaging in different valence conditions, or resource allocation trade-offs between the PM and the ongoing task. In the present study, younger, young-old and old-old adults completed a PM task in which the valence of the cues varied systematically (positive, negative or neutral) at encoding, but was kept constant (neutral) at retrieval. The results indicated that PM accuracy did not vary as a function of affect at encoding, and that this effect did not interact with age group. There was also no main or interaction effect of valence on PM reaction time in PM cue trials, indicating that valence costs across the three encoding conditions were equivalent. Old-old adults' PM accuracy was reduced relative to both young-old and younger adults. Prospective remembering incurred dual-task costs for all three groups. Analyses of reaction time data suggested that for both young-old and old-old, these costs were greater, implying differential resource allocation cost trade-offs. However, when reaction time data were expressed as a proportional change that adjusted for the general slowing of the older adults, costs did not differ as a function of group.
一些研究发现，前瞻性记忆（PM）线索的情绪效价会影响前瞻性记忆的年龄效应，但尚不清楚这种效应反映的是在编码还是提取过程中操作的过程。此外，之前关于情绪效价对 PM 功能影响的老化研究都没有检查在不同情绪条件下参与的潜在成本，或者 PM 和正在进行的任务之间的资源分配权衡。在本研究中，年轻、年轻老年人和老年人在 PM 任务中完成了一项任务，其中线索的效价在编码时系统地变化（正性、负性或中性），但在提取时保持不变（中性）。结果表明，PM 准确性不随编码时的情感而变化，并且该效果与年龄组没有相互作用。在 PM 线索试验中，效价对 PM 反应时间也没有主效应或交互作用，这表明在三个编码条件下的效价成本是相等的。与年轻老年人和年轻成年人相比，老年人的 PM 准确性降低。所有三个组的前瞻性记忆都产生了双重任务成本。对反应时间数据的分析表明，对于年轻老年人和老年人，这些成本更大，意味着资源分配成本的权衡存在差异。然而，当反应时间数据以调整老年人普遍减速的比例变化表示时，成本不会因组而异。
