Department of Psychology.
University of Rochester.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2019 Sep;148(9):1463-1479. doi: 10.1037/xge0000583. Epub 2019 Mar 21.
Our capacity to form and retrieve episodic memories improves over childhood but declines in old age. Understanding these changes requires decomposing episodic memory into its components. Two such components are (a) mnemonic discrimination of similar people, objects, and contexts, and (b) relational binding of these elements. We designed novel memory tasks to assess these component processes using animations that are appropriate across the life span (ages 4-80 in our sample). In Experiment 1, we assessed mnemonic discrimination of objects as well as relational binding, in a common task format. Both components follow an inverted U-shaped curve across age but were positively correlated only in the aging group. In Experiment 2, we examined mnemonic discrimination of context and its effect on relational binding. Relational memory in low-similarity contexts showed robust gains between the ages of 4 and 6, whereas 6-year-olds performed similarly to adults. In contrast, relational memory in high-similarity contexts showed more protracted development, with 4- and 6-year-olds both performing worse than young adults and not differing from each other. Relational memory in both context conditions declined in aging. This multiprocess approach provides important theoretical insights into life span changes in episodic memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
我们形成和提取情景记忆的能力在儿童期提高，但在老年期下降。理解这些变化需要将情景记忆分解为其组成部分。其中两个组成部分是(a)对相似的人和物体以及相似的环境进行记忆辨别，以及(b)对这些元素进行关系绑定。我们设计了新颖的记忆任务，使用适合整个生命周期（我们的样本中年龄为 4-80 岁）的动画来评估这些组成过程。在实验 1 中，我们在一个共同的任务格式中评估了物体的记忆辨别能力以及关系绑定能力。这两个组成部分在整个年龄范围内都呈倒 U 形曲线，但仅在老年组中呈正相关。在实验 2 中，我们研究了对环境的记忆辨别及其对关系绑定的影响。在低相似性环境中，关系记忆在 4 至 6 岁之间表现出明显的提高，而 6 岁儿童的表现与成年人相似。相比之下，在高相似性环境中，关系记忆的发展更为缓慢，4 岁和 6 岁儿童的表现均不如年轻成年人，彼此之间也没有差异。在衰老过程中，两种环境条件下的关系记忆都下降了。这种多过程方法为情景记忆的整个生命周期变化提供了重要的理论见解。（PsycINFO 数据库记录（c）2019 APA，保留所有权利）。
