Adult age differences in memory for name–face associations: The effects of intentional and incidental learning

The Effects of an Afternoon Nap on Episodic Memory in Young and Older Adults

“…Regarding sleep-specific mechanisms, if a specific quantity/quality of slow-wave sleep is necessary for any memory consolidation to occur, then no nap duration will benefit older adults' memory if the slow-wave sleep requirement is not met. Regarding cognitive processing mechanisms, if memory consolidation requires that new learning becomes associated with a "tag" of future relevance during encoding, 51 and if older adults demonstrate associative encoding deficits, 46 then it is possible that older adults will not consolidate memories without successful associative "tagging" at encoding. Regarding neurophysiological mechanisms, there are several brain regions (eg, prefrontal cortex, hippocampus) and neuromodulators (eg, dopamine, acetylcholine) that are hypothesized to be critical to successful memory consolidation, but it is also known that these neurophysiological mechanisms decline with aging.…”

“…There was a significant age group by condition interaction, F(1, 91) = 5.33, MSE = 12.66, p = .03, η p 2 = .06, indicating that hit rate was greater following the nap rather than following quiet wakefulness in the young adults, t (48) Figure 2), may reflect an underlying age-related deficit in associative memory processing. 46 The three-way interaction between hits/false alarms, age group, and nap/wake condition was not significant (F < 1, p = .75, η p 2 < .01). Planned comparisons in the young adult conditions showed that, as predicted by the directed forgetting literature, 41 retention was better for "remember" items (M = 7.58) than for "forget" items (M = 0.52), t(49) = 11.94, p < .001, d = 2.34.…”

Age-related associative deficits are absent with nonwords.

“…Several aging studies have demonstrated associative deficits in older adults with unfamiliar faces, which are novel stimuli (Bastin & Van der Linden, 2005;Bastin & Van der Linden, 2006;James, Fogler, & Tauber, 2008;Naveh-Benjamin, Guez, Kilb, & Reedy, 2004;Naveh-Benjamin et al, 2009;Rhodes, Castel, & Jacoby, 2008). Only four of these studies had comparable measures of both item and associative memory and were therefore able to demonstrate larger associative memory deficits than item memory deficits in older adults: Naveh- Benjamin et al (2004; and Bastin and Van der Linden (2005) did not associate the faces to novel stimuli so only half of the stimuli were novel; Bastin and Van der Linden (2006) used pairs of unrelated faces, but item memory age differences were probably restricted by ceiling effects (proportion correct for item recognition was 0.93 for both young and older adults), making the comparison between item and associative memory age deficits difficult to interpret.…”

“…To explore this possibility, further analyses were conducted excluding participants performing at floor on associative tests as indicated by hit rates not exceeding false alarm rates. More older participants hit floor than young, so to ensure that exclusions were equivalent across age groups, all older participants performing at floor on the associative test were removed, and then the same number of young participants were also removed by selecting the worst associative performers (see Naveh-Benjamin et al, 2009, for a similar procedure). For nonwords, 12 out of 30 older participants (40%) did not perform above floor; for words, 5 out of 24 older participants did not perform above floor.…”

Age-related differences in temporal and spatial dimensions of episodic memory performance before and after hundred days of practice.

“…Thus, age-related differences in source memory depend on the characteristics of the feature dimension. In addition, Chalfonte and Johnson (1996) also observed that feature binding is particularly impaired in older adults (see also Bayen, Phelps, & Spaniol, 2000;Mitchell, Johnson, Raye, Mather, & D'Esposito, 2000;Naveh-Benjamin, 2000;Naveh-Benjamin et al, 2009;Shing et al, 2010;Shing, Werkle-Bergner, Li, & Lindenberger, 2008).Spatial and temporal coordinates are the most prominent aspects of context (e.g., Brown & McCormack, 2006;Gallistel, 1990;Kahneman, Treisman, & Gibbs, 1992;Tulving, 1983;Xu & Chun, 2009). In a seminal article, Hasher and Zacks (1979) argued that age-related differences in memory for both spatial and temporalorder information were minor because such information is processed automatically.…”