Department of Psychology.
Psychol Aging. 2023 Mar;38(2):103-116. doi: 10.1037/pag0000730. Epub 2023 Feb 9.
Older adults often face memory deficits in binding unrelated items. However, in situations such as preparing for foreign travel, a learner may be highly motivated to learn the translations of important words (e.g., "money"). In the present study, younger and older adults studied Swahili-English word pairs and judged the importance of knowing each pair if they were traveling to a foreign country. Generally, we expected older adults to display a memory deficit but for both younger and older adults' memory to be driven by the subjective importance of the to-be-learned information. Both younger and older adults' memory was related to their subjective importance ratings, suggesting that both age groups were able to engage in goal-based value-directed remembering. With increased task experience, older adults appeared to utilize a strategic approach in their study of the translations by spending more time studying the items relative to younger adults. Thus, despite associative memory deficits in older age, both younger and older adults can selectively remember subjectively important information such that older adults can effectively remember new vocabulary that is subjectively important and related to their future goals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
老年人在将不相关的项目联系起来时常常会遇到记忆缺陷。然而，在准备出国旅行等情况下，学习者可能会非常有动力去学习重要单词的翻译（例如“钱”）。在本研究中，年轻和年长的成年人学习了斯瓦希里语-英语单词对，并判断如果他们要去一个外国旅行，了解每一对单词的重要性。一般来说，我们预计老年人会表现出记忆缺陷，但无论是年轻人还是老年人的记忆都受到要学习的信息的主观重要性的驱动。年轻和年长成年人的记忆都与他们的主观重要性评级有关，这表明两个年龄组都能够进行基于目标的价值导向的记忆。随着任务经验的增加，老年人在学习翻译时似乎采用了一种策略性的方法，与年轻人相比，他们花更多的时间学习项目。因此，尽管老年人在联想记忆方面存在缺陷，但年轻人和老年人都可以有选择地记住主观重要的信息，这样老年人就可以有效地记住与他们未来目标相关且主观重要的新词汇。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2023 APA，保留所有权利）。
