Badham Stephen P, Whitney Cora, Sanghera Sumeet, Maylor Elizabeth A
a College of Business Law & Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University , Burton Street, Nottingham , UK.
b Department of Psychology , University of Warwick , Coventry , UK.
Memory. 2017 Jul;25(6):816-830. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2016.1224358. Epub 2016 Sep 1.
Many studies show that age deficits in memory are smaller for information supported by pre-experimental experience. Many studies also find dissociations in memory tasks between words that occur with high and low frequencies in language, but the literature is mixed regarding the extent of word frequency effects in normal ageing. We examined whether age deficits in episodic memory could be influenced by manipulations of word frequency. In Experiment 1, young and older adults studied short and long lists of high- and low-frequency words for free recall. The list length effect (the drop in proportion recalled for longer lists) was larger in young compared to older adults and for high- compared to low-frequency words. In Experiment 2, young and older adults completed item and associative recognition memory tests with high- and low-frequency words. Age deficits were greater for associative memory than for item memory, demonstrating an age-related associative deficit. High-frequency words led to better associative memory performance whilst low-frequency words resulted in better item memory performance. In neither experiment was there any evidence for age deficits to be smaller for high- relative to low-frequency words, suggesting that word frequency effects on memory operate independently from effects due to cognitive ageing.
许多研究表明，对于由实验前经验支持的信息，记忆中的年龄差异较小。许多研究还发现，在语言中出现频率高和低的单词在记忆任务中存在分离现象，但关于正常衰老中单词频率效应的程度，文献中的观点并不一致。我们研究了情景记忆中的年龄差异是否会受到单词频率操纵的影响。在实验1中，年轻人和老年人学习高频和低频单词的短列表和长列表，以便自由回忆。与老年人相比，年轻人中列表长度效应（较长列表的回忆比例下降）更大，且高频单词比低频单词的列表长度效应更大。在实验2中，年轻人和老年人用高频和低频单词完成项目和联想识别记忆测试。联想记忆的年龄差异大于项目记忆，表明存在与年龄相关的联想缺陷。高频单词导致更好的联想记忆表现，而低频单词则导致更好的项目记忆表现。在这两个实验中，均没有证据表明高频单词相对于低频单词的年龄差异更小，这表明单词频率对记忆的影响独立于认知衰老的影响。
