Adult age-related changes in the specificity of episodic memory representations: A review and theoretical framework.

Greene, Nathaniel R.; Naveh–Benjamin, Moshe

doi:10.1037/pag0000724

Cited by 27 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 160 publications

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“…It follows that the effects of MGS will be weaker in children than in young adults, which is consistent with the widely reported finding that the DRM illusion becomes stronger during this age range (for a review, see Brainerd & Reyna, 2023). Turning to older adults, the literature on cognitive aging points to associative and semantic relations as being among the memory abilities that are spared in healthy older adults (e.g., Greene & Naveh-Benjamin, 2023). It follows that the effects of MGS and MBAS should be similar in healthy older adults and young adults, which is consistent with the fact that the strength of the DRM illusion does not decline in healthy older adults (for a review, see Brainerd & Reyna, 2023).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From association to gist: Some critical tests.

Brainerd,

Chang,

Bialer

et al. 2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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We report the first evidence that the gist mechanism of fuzzy-trace theory and the associative mechanism of activation monitoring theory operate in parallel, in the recall version of the Deese/Roediger/McDermott illusion. In three experiments, we implemented a new methodology that allows their respective empirical indexes, gist strength (GS) and backward associative strength (BAS), to each be manipulated while the other is held constant. In Experiment 1, increasing GS increased false recall of missing words, but increasing BAS did not. In Experiments 2 and 3, however, increasing GS and increasing BAS both increased recall of missing words, and those effects were independent and additive. In all three experiments, GS and BAS affected true recall of list words in qualitatively different ways: (a) Increasing GS always improved true recall, regardless of whether BAS was high or low, but (b) increasing BAS impaired true recall when GS was high and improved true recall when GS was low. To pinpoint the retrieval loci of the two variables' effects, we analyzed the data of all experiments with the dual-retrieval model. Those analyses showed that the variables' respective effects were due to different retrieval processes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From association to gist: Some critical tests.

Brainerd,

Chang,

Bialer

et al. 2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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“…Such age differences may also reflect older adults’ tendency to encode event gist, resulting in less precise memory for specific actions (for reviews, see Brainerd & Reyna, 2015; Devitt & Schacter, 2016; Greene & Naveh-Benjamin, 2023). Here, most of the tested features were conceptually central to the activities, as opposed to being perceptual background features.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adult age differences in event memory updating: The roles of prior-event retrieval and prediction.

Stawarczyk¹,

Wahlheim²,

Zacks³

2023

Psychology and Aging

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Remembering past events can lead to predictions of what is to come and to experiencing prediction errors when things change. Previous research has shown enhanced memory updating for ongoing events that are inconsistent with predictions based on past experiences. According to the Event Memory Retrieval and Comparison (EMRC) Theory, such memory updating depends on the encoding of configural representations that bind retrieved features of the previous event, changed features, and the relationship between the two. We investigated potential age-related differences in these mechanisms by showing older and younger adults two movies of everyday activities. Activities in the second movie either repeated from the first movie or included changed endings. During the second movie, before activities ended, participants were instructed to predict the upcoming action based on the first movie. One week later, participants were instructed to recall activity endings from the second movie. For younger adults, having predicted endings consistent with the first movie before seeing changed endings was subsequently associated with better recall of these changed endings and recollection that activities had changed. Conversely, for older adults, making such predictions prior to changes was associated with intruding details from the first movie endings and was less strongly associated with change recollection. Consistent with EMRC, these findings suggest that retrieval of relevant experiences when events change can trigger prediction errors that prompt associative encoding of existing memories and current perceptions. These mechanisms were less efficient in older adults, which may account for their poorer event memory updating than younger adults. Public Significance StatementWhen events change, such as when a physician's office updates their check-in system, memories need to be updated to avoid confusion with the past. Our research suggests that, when updating memories, older adults may not benefit as much as younger adults from predictions based on past events because of difficulties in linking together the features of past and new changed events. This finding can inform interventions for age-related memory decline.

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“…The most common approach has been to measure an attribute's relative effects on recollection versus familiarity by administering remember/know tests in recognition experiments (e.g., Kensinger & Corkin, 2003; Ochsner, 2000; Rimmele et al, 2011). In recall, a measurement model, the dual-retrieval model, is available that implements the familiar distinction between retrieval that operates on literal verbatim traces of experience versus gist traces of partial information (e.g., Abadie & Camos, 2019; Abadie et al, 2013; Greene & Naveh-Benjamin, 2022, in press; Lampinen et al, 2005, 2006; Nieznański, 2020; Nieznański et al, 2019; Singer & Remillard, 2008; Singer & Spear, 2015). The model's parameters measure three specific retrieval processes (see Brainerd et al, 2009): (a) direct access, a recollective operation that reads out the information in verbatim traces of items’ presentations; (b) reconstruction, a non-recollective operation that searches memory for candidate items using traces of partial information; and (c) familiarity judgment, a slave operation that performs quality checks on reconstructed items before passing them on for output.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The big three: Accuracy, organization, and retrieval effects of latent semantic attributes.

Brainerd¹,

Liu²,

Bialer³

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Rating norms for semantic attributes (e.g., concreteness, dominance, familiarity, and valence) are widely used in many psychological literatures to study the effects of processing specific types of semantic content. Word and picture norms for many attributes are available for thousands of items, but there is a contamination problem in experimentation. When an attribute's ratings are varied, how the semantic content that people process changes is unclear because ratings of individual attributes are correlated with ratings of so many other attributes. To solve this problem, the psychological space that 20 attributes occupy has been mapped, and factor score norms have been published for the latent attributes that generate that space (emotional valence, age-of-acquisition, and symbolic size). These latent attributes have yet to be manipulated in experimentation, and hence, their effects are unknown. We conducted a series of experiments that focused on whether they affect accuracy, memory organization, and specific retrieval processes. We found that (a) all three latent attributes affected recall accuracy, (b) all three affected memory organization in recall protocols, and (c) all three affected direct verbatim access, rather than reconstruction or familiarity. The memory effects of two of them (valence and age-of-acquisition) were unconditional, but memory effects were only detected for the third at particular levels of the other two. The key implications are that semantic attributes can now be cleanly manipulated, and when they are, they have broad downstream effects on memory. Public Significance StatementA fundamental principle of human memory is that meaning is crucial: Information that is more meaningful to people is more easily learned, more easily remembered, and more easily retained over time. Meaning has many components, and hence, we must understand the effects of specific components to use this principle to optimize memory. That question has traditionally been investigated by studying the effects of distinct semantic attributes, such as categorization, concreteness, imagery, familiarity, and valence. However, we know that these attributes are not actually distinct and, instead, are substantially correlated. This problem has recently been solved by analyzing a large collection of semantic attributes and extracting three latent attributes (emotional valence, age-of-acquisition, and symbolic size) that are actually distinct from each other. Our experiments show that people process each of these latent attributes because each has broad memory effects. In particular, each latent attribute affects recall accuracy, the organization of memory, and people's ability to recover literal verbatim memories of experience.

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Adult age-related changes in the specificity of episodic memory representations: A review and theoretical framework.

Cited by 27 publications

References 160 publications

From association to gist: Some critical tests.

From association to gist: Some critical tests.

Adult age differences in event memory updating: The roles of prior-event retrieval and prediction.

The big three: Accuracy, organization, and retrieval effects of latent semantic attributes.

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