A picture is worth a thousand words? Not when it comes to associative memory of older adults.

Guez, Jonathan; Lev, Dror

doi:10.1037/pag0000069

Cited by 13 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…A possible reconciliation may be differences in the strategic encoding of word versus picture pairs with the latter perhaps evoking more spontaneous unitization (e.g., imagining the person in the scene in Chen and Naveh-Benjamin’s material), which would allow for familiarity-supported associative memory that is dependent on regions external to the hippocampus (Haskins, Yonelinas, Quamme, & Ranganath, 2008). This fits with evidence for enhanced associative recognition of picture pairs compared with word pairs in a previous study (Guez & Lev, 2016; but note that this did not hold for older adults). As we are not aware of any research comparing rates of spontaneous unitization of word versus picture pairs, this possible reconciliation remains speculative for now.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Longer resistance of associative versus item memory to interference-based forgetting, even in older adults.

Kuhlmann¹,

Brubaker²,

Pfeiffer³

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Few studies have compared interference-based forgetting between item versus associative memory. The memory-system dependent forgetting hypothesis (Hardt, Nader, & Nadel, 2013) predicts that effects of interference on associative memory should be minimal because its hippocampal representation allows pattern separation even of highly similar information. In contrast, there should be strong interference effects on extra-hippocampally represented item memory. We tested this prediction in behavioral data from 3 experiments using continuous recognition paradigms. Given older adults’ greater deficits in associative than item memory, we also compared younger and older adults to test whether this associative deficit extends to greater interference susceptibility in older adults’ associative memory. Experiment 1 examined item-item associative memory with participants studying unrelated word pairs continuously intermixed with item (single words) and associative (intact vs. recombined pairs) recognition tests across interference-filled lags. Experiments 2 and 3 examined item-context (i.e., source) associative memory with participants studying words in different spatial positions continuously intermixed with source-monitoring tests (presented on top vs. on bottom vs. new?) across interference-filled lags (Experiment 3 controlling for delay/decay-based effects). In all experiments, item memory declined from the first lag on. In contrast, associative memory initially remained stable, with strong evidence for null effects of interference even in older adults, but showed some declines at later lags. The data supports Hardt et al.’s proposal of differential interference-based forgetting in item versus associative memory. The results further show that the age-related associative memory deficit does not extend to greater interference-based forgetting in older adults’ associative memory.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Longer resistance of associative versus item memory to interference-based forgetting, even in older adults.

Kuhlmann¹,

Brubaker²,

Pfeiffer³

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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“…Previous research has shown that associative memory (i.e., memory for how different units of information are related) declines more with age than item memory (Chalfont & Johnson, 1996). This has been shown across various methods and materials, such as person-action pairs (Old & Naveh-Benjamin, 2008a), word pairs (Naveh-Benjamin, 2000), and picture pairs (Guez & Lev, 2016). According to the Associative Deficit Hypothesis (ADH; Naveh-Benjamin, 2000), older adults are particularly impaired on tests of associative memory because the mechanism that binds individual items into pairs at encoding declines with age (Old & Naveh-Benjamin, 2008b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Implicit associative memory remains intact with age and extends to target-distractor pairs

Davis

Foy

Giovanello

et al. 2020

Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition

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Past research has shown that older adults' reduced inhibitory control causes them to hyper-bind, or form erroneous associations between task-relevant and -irrelevant information. In the current study, we aimed to extend hyper-binding to a novel, implicit memory paradigm. In two experiments, participants viewed pictures of objects superimposed with text and their task was to make speeded categorization judgments about the objects. The encoding phase contained three blocks that varied the potential for binding: no-binding, some-binding, and full-binding. During the no/some-binding blocks, participants decided if the pictured object alone could fit inside a common desk drawer while ignoring the superimposed text. In the no-binding block, the text was a nonword; in the some-binding block, it was an object word. During the full-binding block, participants attended to both the picture and word and decided if both items could fit inside a drawer together. After a delay, participants completed the test phase during which they viewed intact and rearranged pairs from the three encoding blocks and decided if both items could fit in a drawer together. In both experiments, older adults responded faster to intact than rearranged pairs from both the some-and full-binding blocks, suggesting that they had learned both targettarget and target-distractor pairs. Young adults showed no difference in RTs to pairs from either block. These findings suggest that the binding mechanism itself is spared with age; what declines instead is inhibitory control, which serves to limit attention, and ergo binding, to task-relevant information.iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Campbell for her constant support and mentorship over the last two years. I have become a much better researcher because of her knowledge, expertise, and the time that she dedicates to her graduate students. I am thankful every day that I was able to complete my degree in her lab. Thank you to my committee members Dr. Emrich and Dr. Mahy for their invaluable insight and support. I would like to thank Sarah Henderson for being an amazing teammate and a sounding board. I could not have asked for a better office-mate and friend to enjoy the highs and lows of graduate school with. I could not imagine the next four years of my Ph.D. without her partnership (and "sad" afternoon muffins). This research could not have been done without Amy Holliday who poured hours of her time into calling older adults, training research assistants, and going above and beyond her responsibilities to help with this project. Finally, thank you to all members of Campbell's Neurocognitive Aging lab, extended BUCAN Lab, and the Face Perception Lab, who all piloted experiments, helped with programming, tested participants, searched for older adults in parking lots, made fresh coffee in the morning, and shared intel on free food from 600F.

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“…Following these findings, the ADH predicts that older adults will perform more poorly on tasks that require the formation of associations between items within an episode or scene. Multiple studies have shown that older adults demonstrate an associative deficit for different types of pairs, such as word-word pairs (Naveh-Benjamin, 2000; Provyn, Sliwinski, & Howard, 2007), picture-picture pairs (Guez & Lev, 2016; Naveh-Benjamin, Hussain, Guez, & Bar-On, 2003), and face-name pairs (Naveh-Benjamin, Guez, Kilb, & Reedy, 2004; for a review, see Old & Naveh-Benjamin, 2008).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Age differences in episodic associative learning.

Clark

Hazeltine

Freedberg

et al. 2018

Psychology and Aging

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Compared with young adults, older adults demonstrate difficulty forming and retrieving episodic memories. One proposed mechanism is that older adults are impaired at binding information into nonoverlapping representations, which is a key function of the hippocampus. The current experiments evaluate age differences in acquiring new memories using a novel episodic associative learning (EAL) task designed to tap hippocampal-dependent binding. The task involved repeated exposure of stimuli pairs and required the formation of new representations of each stimulus pair, as each pair was mapped to a unique keypress response. Notably, individual stimuli appeared in multiple pairs, so pair retrieval was necessary for correct response production. Experiment 1 demonstrated that older adults learned more slowly, and less overall, than young adults on this task. We also found that older adults benefited less than young adults from correct responses and as the number of intervening pairs between repetitions of a pair increased, older adults showed larger decrements in accuracy than young adults. Experiment 2 replicated these findings while minimizing motor demands and providing more practice. We also measured processing speed and spatial reconstruction to determine the involvement of specific cognitive mechanisms in observed age effects. We found that young adults with better spatial reconstruction abilities performed better on the EAL task than young adults with lower abilities and older adults overall. These findings suggest that older adults' lower performance on the task may be partly explained by a decline in hippocampal-supported binding processes and a greater reliance on extrahippocampal learning systems. (PsycINFO Database Record

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A picture is worth a thousand words? Not when it comes to associative memory of older adults.

Cited by 13 publications

References 26 publications

Longer resistance of associative versus item memory to interference-based forgetting, even in older adults.

Longer resistance of associative versus item memory to interference-based forgetting, even in older adults.

Implicit associative memory remains intact with age and extends to target-distractor pairs

Age differences in episodic associative learning.

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