Rowe Gillian, Troyer Angela K, Murphy Kelly J, Biss Renee, Hasher Lynn
Neuropsychology and Cognitive Health, Baycrest Health Sciences, Toronto, Canada.
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn. 2023 Mar;30(2):172-180. doi: 10.1080/13825585.2021.1998320. Epub 2021 Nov 1.
Previous work has shown that older adults with typical age-related memory changes (i.e., without cognitive impairment) pick up irrelevant information implicitly, and unknowingly use that information when it becomes relevant to a later task. Here, we address the possibility that implicit processes play a similarly beneficial role in the cognitive abilities of individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). Twenty-two individuals with aMCI and 22 matched controls participated in a picture judgment task while instructed to ignore distractions in the form of word/non-word letter strings. Memory for the distracting words was later tested with a word-fragment completion task. Both groups showed a priming effect, that is, they were significantly more likely to solve fragments of previously presented than non-presented words. However, the aMCI group had significantly higher scores than the older adults without cognitive impairment, (42) = 2.16, p < .05, Cohen's d = 0.67. Our findings suggest that individuals with aMCI can enhance their performance on an explicit cognitive task, in this case, word-fragment completion, if previously exposed to the relevant information implicitly, opening up possible interventions aimed at this population.
先前的研究表明，有典型年龄相关性记忆变化（即无认知障碍）的老年人会隐性地获取无关信息，并在该信息与后续任务相关时不知不觉地加以利用。在此，我们探讨隐性过程在遗忘型轻度认知障碍（aMCI）个体的认知能力中是否发挥类似的有益作用。22名aMCI个体和22名匹配的对照组参与者参加了一项图片判断任务，同时被要求忽略以单词/非单词字母串形式出现的干扰。随后用单词片段补全任务测试对干扰单词的记忆。两组均表现出启动效应，也就是说，他们解决先前呈现过的单词片段的可能性显著高于未呈现过的单词。然而，aMCI组的得分显著高于无认知障碍的老年人，(42) = 2.16，p <.05，科恩d值 = 0.67。我们的研究结果表明，如果aMCI个体先前隐性接触过相关信息，他们在明确的认知任务（此例为单词片段补全）中的表现可以得到提升，这为针对该人群的可能干预措施提供了思路。
