Fu Li, Maes Joseph H R, Kessels Roy P C, Daselaar Sander M
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Department of Medical Psychology, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2017 Mar 22;12(3):e0174217. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0174217. eCollection 2017.
It is essential to develop effective interventions aimed at ameliorating age-related cognitive decline. Previous studies found that effortful encoding benefits episodic memory in older adults. However, to date it is unclear whether this benefit is different for individuals with strong versus weak executive functioning (EF). Fifty-one older adults were recruited and divided into low (N = 26) and high (N = 25) functioning groups, based on their EF capacity. All participants performed a semantic and a perceptual incidental encoding task. Each encoding task was performed under four difficulty levels to establish different effort levels. Encoding was followed by a recognition task. Results showed that the high EF group benefitted from increased effort in both tasks. However, the low EF group only showed a beneficial effect under low levels of effort. Results are consistent with the Compensation-Related Utilization of Neural Circuits Hypothesis (CRUNCH) and suggest that future research directed at developing efficient memory strategies to reduce negative cognitive aging effects should take individual cognitive differences among older adults into account, such as differences in EF.
开发旨在改善与年龄相关的认知衰退的有效干预措施至关重要。先前的研究发现，努力编码对老年人的情景记忆有益。然而，迄今为止，尚不清楚这种益处对于执行功能（EF）强的个体和弱的个体是否有所不同。招募了51名老年人，并根据他们的EF能力将其分为低功能组（N = 26）和高功能组（N = 25）。所有参与者都执行了语义和知觉附带编码任务。每个编码任务在四个难度级别下进行，以建立不同的努力程度。编码后进行识别任务。结果表明，高EF组在两项任务中都从增加的努力中受益。然而，低EF组仅在低努力水平下显示出有益效果。结果与神经回路补偿相关利用假说（CRUNCH）一致，并表明未来旨在开发有效记忆策略以减少负面认知衰老影响的研究应考虑老年人之间的个体认知差异，例如EF差异。
