Relative to young adults, older adults typically exhibit a reduced ability to accurately remember associations between stimuli. Prior research has assumed that this age-related memory impairment affects different types of associations similarly. However, research in young adults has suggested that item-item and item-context associations are supported by different underlying neural mechanisms that could be unequally affected by aging. This experiment compared memory across association types in younger and older adults by presenting the same types of stimuli as either item-item or item-context pairs. Manner of presentation during retrieval was also manipulated so that pairs were presented in a manner that was either congruent or incongruent with their presentation during encoding. Older adults showed a particular benefit of encoding-retrieval congruency for item-context associations, supporting the idea that the associative deficit may be reduced by unitization at encoding and reinstatement of this prior stimulus configuration at retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record

Previous work has shown mixed evidence regarding age-related deficits for binding in working memory. The current study used the newly developed attribute amnesia effect (H. Chen & Wyble, 2015a) to test the associative-deficit hypothesis during working memory and to probe whether hyper-binding extends to include binding of de-selected information. In studies of attribute amnesia, participants use target attributes (e.g., identity, color) to demonstrate near ceiling levels of reporting of a second target attribute (e.g., location) across a series of trials (H. Chen & Wyble, 2015a, 2016). Yet, despite having just processed the target-defining attribute, they have difficulty reporting it on a surprise trial. This effect provides several predictions for associative binding in aging. The associative-deficit hypothesis predicts age-related decline on the surprise trial, whereas an extension of hyper-binding predicts age-related increase in performance in older adults. In Experiment 1, when working memory load was low, older adults demonstrated attribute amnesia equal to that found in younger adults. When load increased in Experiment 2, older adults again demonstrated attribute amnesia as well as an age deficit for reporting target attributes. In lieu of spontaneous binding, results suggest that expectancy plays a critical role in older adults' propensity to encode and bind target attributes in working memory. Results further suggest that expectancy alone is not enough for older adults to form bound representations when task demands are high. Taken together results revealed a boundary condition of hyper-binding and further provided conditional support for the associative-deficit hypothesis in working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record

Presenting items multiple times during encoding is a common way to enhance recognition accuracy. Under such conditions, older adults often show an increase in false recognition that counteracts benefits of repeated study. Using a false-memory paradigm with related study items and related lures, we tested whether repetition within the same encoding task or repetition across two different encoding tasks would be more beneficial to older adults' memory discriminability. Results showed that, compared to items not repeated at study, items repeated in the same context and items repeated across different contexts showed improvements in memory discriminability in both young and older adults. This improvement was primarily reflected in improved recollection responses for both age groups across both repeat study conditions, as compared to no repetition. Importantly, the results demonstrated that repetition can be used to successfully mitigate age-related deficits by increasing memory discriminability and without incurring a cost of false recognition specific to any one age group.

This chapter reviews the behavioral and neuroimaging literature examining age differences in item and associative memory. Furthermore, when possible the review breaks down differences at the encoding and the retrieval phases of memory. With respect to behavioral findings, age‐related differences in memory performance are discussed in terms of encoding support, resource allocation, and testing format. Age‐related benefits from contextual support and semantic processing strategies are also outlined. With respect to the neuroimaging findings, the review focuses on age‐related differences in activation and recruitment of the medial temporal lobe and the prefrontal cortex. When possible, these differences are discussed in the context of methods that may mitigate age deficits in neural recruitment. Differences in neural processes for associative memory are described in terms of decreased frontal activation and the impact of various encoding strategies on these neural activations. We conclude with future directions that would support a more nuanced understanding of the described age differences.

One of the more severe and consequential memory impairments experienced by older adults is the loss of the ability to form and remember associations. Although the associative deficit is often assumed to be unitary, memory episodes may contain different types of associations (e.g., item-item, item-context). Research in younger adults suggests that these different association types may involve different neural mechanisms. This raises the possibility that different association types are not equally affected by aging. In order to investigate this, the current study directly compared memory across item-item and item-context associations in younger and older adults by manipulating the manner of presentation of the associations. Results indicate that the associative deficit in aging is not uniform and that aging has a greater impact on item-context compared to item-item associations. The results have implications for theories of associative memory, age-related cognitive decline, and the functional organization of the medial temporal lobe in aging.