School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
School of Psychology, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2021 Apr;74(4):682-704. doi: 10.1177/1747021820970744. Epub 2020 Nov 27.
Although there is evidence that the effect of including a concurrent processing demand on the storage of information in working memory is disproportionately larger for older than younger adults, not all studies show this age-related impairment, and the critical factors responsible for any such impairment remain elusive. Here we assess whether domain overlap between storage and processing activities, and access to semantic representations, are important determinants of performance in a sample of younger and older adults ( = 119). We developed four versions of a processing task by manipulating the type of stimuli involved (either verbal or non-verbal) and the decision that participants had to make about the stimuli presented on the screen. Participants either had to perform a spatial judgement, in deciding whether the verbal or non-verbal item was presented above or below the centre of the screen, or a semantic judgement, in deciding whether the stimulus refers to something living or not living. The memory task was serial-ordered recall of visually presented letters. The study revealed a large increase in age-related memory differences when concurrent processing was required. These differences were smaller when storage and processing activities both used verbal materials. Dual-task effects on processing were also disproportionate for older adults. Age differences in processing performance appeared larger for tasks requiring spatial decisions rather than semantic decisions. We discuss these findings in relation to three competing frameworks of working memory and the extant literature on cognitive ageing.
虽然有证据表明，对于老年人来说，在工作记忆中存储信息时同时进行处理任务的效果比年轻人更为明显，但并非所有研究都表明存在这种与年龄相关的认知能力下降，而且导致这种认知能力下降的关键因素仍然难以捉摸。在这里，我们评估了在年轻和老年成年人样本中（n=119），存储和处理活动之间的领域重叠以及对语义表示的访问是否是表现的重要决定因素。我们通过操纵涉及的刺激类型（言语或非言语）以及参与者必须对屏幕上呈现的刺激做出的决策，开发了四种处理任务版本。参与者要么必须执行空间判断，决定言语或非言语项目是出现在屏幕中心的上方还是下方，要么执行语义判断，决定刺激是否指的是有生命的东西。记忆任务是对视觉呈现的字母进行序列回忆。研究表明，当需要同时进行处理时，与年龄相关的记忆差异会大大增加。当存储和处理活动都使用言语材料时，这些差异较小。对于老年人来说，双重任务对处理的影响也不成比例。对于需要空间决策而不是语义决策的任务，处理绩效的年龄差异似乎更大。我们将这些发现与三种竞争的工作记忆框架和关于认知老化的现有文献联系起来进行讨论。
