Department of Communication Sciences, Humanities and International Studies, Cultures, Languages, Literatures, Arts, Media (DISCUI), University of Urbino Carlo Bo.
Psychol Aging. 2018 Nov;33(7):1060-1069. doi: 10.1037/pag0000297. Epub 2018 Sep 13.
The aim of the current study was to investigate how the taxonomic and thematic organization of semantic long-term memory affected the recall performance of adults and older participants on a complex semantic working memory (SWM) task. Taxonomic and thematic classification are the two main systems used to organize knowledge: taxonomic information is hierarchically structured and typically independent of space and time, whereas thematically grouped concepts are horizontal and strictly context-dependent. Generally, thematic connections (more intuitive and experience-based) are formed earlier in development, while taxonomic links (more abstract and logic-based) are acquired later. We set out to explore whether this developmental pattern reverses with age, hypothesizing that the more complex form of memory organization (i.e., taxonomic) would play a lesser role in facilitating recall in the old, whereas thematic organization would be better preserved. Participants (aged 18 to 85 years) were asked to recall 60 words in sets of increasing span; the words were featured in lists organized to force a taxonomic association, a thematic association, or no semantic association. The results clearly showed that task accuracy varied more across age groups for taxonomically linked items than for thematically linked ones. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
本研究旨在探究语义长时记忆的分类和主题组织如何影响成年人和老年人在复杂语义工作记忆（SWM）任务中的回忆表现。分类和主题分类是组织知识的两种主要系统：分类信息是层次结构的，通常独立于空间和时间，而主题分组的概念是水平的，严格依赖于上下文。一般来说，主题联系（更直观和基于经验）在发展早期形成，而分类联系（更抽象和基于逻辑）则在后期获得。我们着手探索这种发展模式是否会随年龄而逆转，假设更复杂的记忆组织形式（即分类）在促进老年人回忆方面的作用较小，而主题组织则会更好地保留。参与者（年龄在 18 至 85 岁之间）被要求按增加跨度的组回忆 60 个单词；这些单词出现在组织成强制分类关联、主题关联或无语义关联的列表中。结果清楚地表明，对于分类关联的项目，任务准确性在年龄组之间的变化大于主题关联的项目。（PsycINFO 数据库记录（c）2018 APA，保留所有权利）。
