Salthouse T A
School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0170.
Br J Psychol. 1993 May;84 ( Pt 2):171-99. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1993.tb02472.x.
The four studies reported in this article, involving a total of 401 adults ranging between 18 and 80 years of age, were designed to investigate how working memory might mediate adult age differences in matrix reasoning tasks such as the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test. Evidence of this medication is available in the finding that statistical control of an index of working memory reduces the age-related variance in matrix reasoning performance by approximately 70 per cent. Because the age differences were nearly constant across items of varying difficulty, it was concluded that the factors responsible for variation in item difficulty were distinct from those responsible for the age differences. However, young adults were found to be more accurate than older adults at recognizing information presented earlier in the matrix reasoning trial, thereby supporting the interpretation that working memory exerts its influence by contributing to the preservation of information during subsequent processing.
本文报道的四项研究共涉及401名年龄在18岁至80岁之间的成年人，旨在调查工作记忆如何在诸如瑞文渐进性矩阵测验等矩阵推理任务中介导成年人的年龄差异。这种中介作用的证据体现在以下发现中：对工作记忆指标进行统计控制后，矩阵推理表现中与年龄相关的方差减少了约70%。由于在不同难度的项目中年龄差异几乎保持不变，因此得出结论，造成项目难度变化的因素与导致年龄差异的因素不同。然而，研究发现，在矩阵推理试验中，年轻人在识别较早呈现的信息方面比老年人更准确，从而支持了这样一种解释，即工作记忆通过在后续处理过程中帮助保存信息来发挥其影响。
