The ability to remember associations among components of an event, which is central to episodic memory, declines with normal aging. In accord with the specificity principle of memory, these declines may occur because associative memory requires retrieval of specific information. Guided by this principle, we endeavored to determine whether ubiquitous age-related deficits in associative memory are restricted to specific representations or extend to the gist of associations. Young and older adults (30 each in Experiment 1, 40 each in Experiment 2) studied face–scene pairs and then performed associative-recognition tests following variable delays. Whereas both young and older adults could retrieve the gist of associations, older adults were impaired in their ability to retrieve more specific representations. Our results also show that associations can be retrieved from multiple levels of specificity, suggesting that episodic memory might be accessed on a continuum of specificity.
Relative to younger adults, older adults tend to perform more poorly on tests of both free recall and item recognition memory. The age difference in performance is typically larger for recall tasks relative to those involving recognition. However, there have been reports of comparable age-related differences in free recall and item recognition performance. Further, a differential performance cost does not necessarily mean that processes involved in recall are specifically affected by age. Here we present a meta-analysis of 36 articles reporting 89 direct comparisons of free recall and item recognition in younger and older groups of participants. Standardized effect sizes reveal that age differences are larger for recall tasks (Hedges' g = 0.89, 95% confidence intervals [0.75, 1.03]) than for recognition tasks (0.54, [0.37, 0.72]). Further, Brinley analyses of the data suggest that distinct functions are needed to relate younger and older performance for the two tasks. These functions differ in intercept pointing to a disproportionate age difference in recall relative to recognition. This is in line with theories of memory and aging which posit specific deficits in processes related to search and retrieval from memory.
We propose that the specificity with which associations in episodic memory can be remembered varies on a continuum. In Experiment 1, we provide further evidence that older adults' deficits in associative memory scale with the amount of specificity that needs to be retrieved. In Experiment 2, we address whether depleted attentional resources, simulated in young adults under divided attention at encoding, could account for older adults' associative memory specificity deficits. Participants studied face-scene pairs and later completed an associative recognition test, with test pairs that were old, highly similar or less similar to old pairs, or completely dissimilar. Participants rated their confidence in their decisions. False positive recognition responses increased with the amount of specificity needed to be retrieved. Whereas older adults' associative memory deficits scaled with how much specific information needed to be remembered, younger adults under divided attention had a more general deficit in associative memory. Confidence-accuracy analysis showed that participants were best able to calibrate their confidence when less specific information was needed to perform well. While divided attention young adults were generally prone to high-confidence errors, older adults' high-confidence errors were most apparent when highly specific information needed to be remembered. These results provide further evidence for levels of specificity in episodic memory. Access to the most specific levels is most vulnerable to forgetting, in line with a specificity principle of memory (Surprenant & Neath, 2009). Further, depleted attentional resources at encoding cannot entirely explain older adults' associative memory specificity deficits.
We provide a comprehensive review describing research on the qualitative representational nature of older adults’ episodic memories. Our review considers several broad theoretical frameworks and decades of research converging on a universal principle of adult aging: Episodic memory in older adulthood is characterized as being less specific in nature than in younger adulthood. Going beyond earlier specific reviews on related topics in the false memory, neuroscience, and reading comprehension literatures, our review synthesizes findings from these fields with more recent research from the precision literature, along with several new studies on age differences in the specificity of associative aspects of episodic memory, where age deficits have long been reported. We also sketch a new theoretical framework as inspiration for future research that can better elucidate the mechanisms underpinning age differences in the specificity of memory representations, including reduced attentional resources and slower speed of processing.
Effects of divided attention (DA) during encoding on later memory performance are widely documented. However, the precise nature of these effects on underlying memory representations and subsequent retrieval processes has not been thoroughly investigated. Here, we examined whether DA at encoding would disrupt young adults’ ability to remember associations in episodic memory at highly specific levels of representation (i.e., verbatim memory), or whether the effects of DA extend also to gist memory for associations. Two groups of participants (one under full attention, one under DA) studied face–scene pairs. The DA group simultaneously completed an auditory choice reaction-time task during encoding. Following either a short or long delay, participants were tested on their ability to discriminate intact face–scene pairs from recombined pairs that were either highly similar, less similar, or completely unrelated to originally studied pairs. The DA group performed more poorly than the full attention participants at correctly classifying most types of test pairs at both delays, and results from a multinomial-processing-tree model demonstrated that participants who encoded associations under DA experienced deficits in both specific and gist memory retrieval. We also compared the DA group to full attention older adults who were tested with the same paradigm (Greene & Naveh-Benjamin, Psychological Science, 31 [3], 316–331, 2020). The DA group had lower estimates of gist retrieval than the older adults but similar estimates of verbatim memory. These results suggest that DA at encoding disrupts episodic memories at multiple levels of representation, in contrast to age-related effects, which are restricted only to the highest levels of specificity. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13421-021-01196-9.
Age-related deficits in associative episodic memory have been widely reported, but recent research suggests that some of these deficits occur for highly specific but not gist representations. It remains undetermined whether older adults' deficits in specific associative episodic memory, observed in long-term memory, are also present in short-term memory. We used a continuous associative recognition task to address this question. Fifty young and 50 older adults studied face-scene pairs, with memory tests occurring in both short-term and long-term memory. Memory tests featured intact (old) pairs, related (similar) pairs, and unrelated (dissimilar) pairs. On short-term memory tests, older adults were less accurate in classifying related pairs, which was manifest by age-related reductions in the probability of retrieving specific memory to engage in recollection rejection. However, older adults were capable of remembering specific details in short-term memory for intact probes but were less likely to remember specific details in long-term memory. Finally, older adults were always as capable as younger adults of remembering gist details. Results suggest that older adults do at least partially encode specific representations in short-term memory, and their access to these specific representations is cue dependent-they can do so when there is a large correspondence between encoding and retrieval conditions but are less likely to engage in deeper elaboration at retrieval. This limits their ability to remember specific details of associations to suppress false recognitions in short-term memory and to engage in veridical recognition in long-term memory. Public Significance StatementAdult aging is associated with a loss of memory for specific details of past experiences, yet little is known about how quickly older adults forget specific representations in episodic memory. The present study shows that older adults exhibit some losses in the ability to remember specific details of past episodes almost immediately after encountering those episodes. At the same time, given the right retrieval cues in short-term memory, older adults can successfully remember some specific details of a recently encoded episode as well as younger adults. Moreover, older adults can successfully remember past episodes at gist levels of representation in both short-and long-term memory.
We explored whether long-term memory (LTM) retrieval is constrained by working memory (WM) limitations, in 80 younger and 80 older adults. Participants performed a WM task with images of unique everyday items, presented at varying set sizes. Subsequently, we tested participants’ LTM for items from the WM task and examined the ratio of LTM/WM retention. While older adults’ WM and LTM were generally poorer than that of younger adults, their LTM deficit was no greater than what was predicted from their WM performance. The ability to encode WM information into LTM appeared immune to age-related cognitive decline.
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