Huppert F A, Kopelman M D
Department of Psychiatry, Cambridge University, U.K.
Neuropsychologia. 1989;27(6):849-60. doi: 10.1016/0028-3932(89)90008-0.
This paper examines the effect of normal ageing on the forgetting rate of visuo-spatial material in a sample of 74 subjects, aged between 16 and 83. It finds that normal ageing produces a mild acquisition deficit as well as a significant increase in the forgetting rate; and it demonstrates that the relatively rapid rate of forgetting in the elderly cannot be accounted for by differences in the initial level of acquisition. The present result is contrasted with that obtained in studies of dementia and the Korsakoff syndrome, which have demonstrated a profound acquisition deficit but a normal forgetting rate once initial learning has been accomplished. Possible explanations of these differing patterns of results are briefly considered.
本文研究了74名年龄在16岁至83岁之间的受试者样本中正常衰老对视觉空间材料遗忘率的影响。研究发现，正常衰老会导致轻微的获取缺陷以及遗忘率显著增加；并且表明老年人相对较快的遗忘率不能用获取初始水平的差异来解释。将目前的结果与在痴呆症和科萨科夫综合征研究中获得的结果进行了对比，后者表明存在严重的获取缺陷，但一旦完成初始学习，遗忘率正常。简要考虑了这些不同结果模式的可能解释。
