Department of Psychology, Trier University.
Department of Psychology, Saarland University.
Psychol Aging. 2018 May;33(3):497-511. doi: 10.1037/pag0000256.
We investigated whether healthy older adults are able to use an episodic encoding strategy known as unitization, which allows for subsequent associative retrieval based on familiarity, to overcome their associative memory deficit. Young and healthy older participants were presented with word pairs either together with a definition that allowed to combine the word pairs to a new concept (high unitization condition), or together with a sentence frame (low unitization condition). In Experiment 1, an age-related reduction in performance on a standard associative recognition test was observed in both conditions. This deficit was unexpectedly not reduced, but tended to be larger in the high than the low unitization condition. According to receiver-operating characteristics, this difference was due to a reduction of recollection, but not familiarity, in the high unitization condition. Instead of a standard recognition test, Experiment 2 used a 2 alternative forced choice (2AFC) test designed to maximize the contribution of familiarity to associative recognition. Although the disadvantage of older adults in the high versus the low unitization condition was abolished, there was still no performance advantage for the high unitization condition. Event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded during the encoding phase of Experiment 1 suggest that, while young adults engage in predictive processing during unitization, older adults do not engage in such predictive processing, which may prevent them from using unitization to their advantage in the subsequent associative memory test. We discuss the task characteristics that have an impact on the effect of unitization conditions on associative memory in older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record
我们研究了健康的老年人是否能够使用一种称为单元化的情景编码策略，这种策略允许基于熟悉度进行后续的联想检索，以克服他们的联想记忆缺陷。年轻和健康的老年参与者被呈现单词对，这些单词对要么与允许将单词对组合成新概念的定义一起呈现（高单元化条件），要么与句子框架一起呈现（低单元化条件）。在实验 1 中，在两种条件下，标准联想识别测试中都观察到与年龄相关的表现下降。出乎意料的是，这种缺陷并没有减少，反而在高单元化条件下似乎更大。根据接收者操作特性，这种差异是由于在高单元化条件下回忆的减少，而不是熟悉度的减少。实验 2 没有使用标准的识别测试，而是使用了 2 种替代强制选择（2AFC）测试，旨在最大限度地提高熟悉度对联想识别的贡献。尽管在高单元化条件下，与低单元化条件相比，老年人处于劣势，但高单元化条件下的表现并没有优势。实验 1 中在编码阶段记录的事件相关电位（ERP）表明，尽管年轻成年人在单元化过程中进行了预测性处理，但老年人没有进行这种预测性处理，这可能阻止他们在随后的联想记忆测试中利用单元化来获得优势。我们讨论了影响单元化条件对老年人联想记忆影响的任务特征。
