Hess T M, Slaughter S J
J Gerontol. 1986 Mar;41(2):214-21. doi: 10.1093/geronj/41.2.214.
The hypotheses that prototype abstraction is an automatic process unaffected by aging and that different aging effects associated with different types of concept learning can be accounted for by differential effortful memory process involvement were examined. Young and old adults were compared on tests of prototype abstraction and concept identification, and relationships between performance measures derived from these tasks and backward memory span were assessed. In the abstraction task, both age groups used prototypical organizational processes to structure incoming information, but age differences did exist in the specificity of the information used in prototype construction. Concept identification performance, however, declined with age, and the poorer performance of the old adults was related to their poorer memory skills. The results suggest that the different aging effects associated with different tests of conceptual skills are dependent upon the nature of the underlying processes.
原型抽象是一个不受衰老影响的自动过程，并且与不同类型概念学习相关的不同衰老效应可以通过不同程度的努力记忆过程参与来解释。在原型抽象和概念识别测试中对年轻人和老年人进行了比较，并评估了从这些任务中得出的绩效指标与逆向记忆广度之间的关系。在抽象任务中，两个年龄组都使用原型组织过程来构建传入信息，但在原型构建中使用的信息的特异性方面确实存在年龄差异。然而，概念识别表现随着年龄增长而下降，老年人较差的表现与他们较差的记忆技能有关。结果表明，与不同概念技能测试相关的不同衰老效应取决于潜在过程的性质。
