Age-Related Changes in Verbal Working Memory Strategies

Chevalère, Johann; Lemaire, Patrick; Camos, Valérie

doi:10.1080/0361073x.2020.1716152

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 93 publications

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“…Some research (e.g., Chevalère et al., 2020; DeDe, 2014) suggests that declines in processing speed are themselves a compensation mechanism for working with limited resources in older age. The potential reasons for this are manifold: older adults have fewer available cognitive resources to dedicate to a task, and may choose more selectively where to dedicate these resources and when to avoid an overload of cognitive demand (Brébion, 2003; Hess, 2014).…”

Section: Ageing Memory and Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Evidence suggests that the use of semantic information may counteract memory declines, and that an absence of semantic content may exacerbate sentence processing deficits (e.g., Poulisse et al., 2019). Another potential source of compensation includes strategic slowing, where older adults’ slower processing speed (Salthouse, 1996) is seen as a strategy to selectively deploy the reduced cognitive resources available to older adults (e.g., Chevalère et al., 2020). Whether these compensation mechanisms play a significant role, and to what extent they account for older adults’ performance on linguistic tasks, as well as the question whether they apply similarly to all languages, is a necessary topic for future investigation.…”

Section: Conclusion and Suggestions For Further Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sentence comprehension in ageing and Alzheimer's disease

Boxtel

Lawyer

2021

Language and Linguist. Compass

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The ability to correctly interpret complex syntax and long sentences is gradually impaired as people age. Typical ageing is characterised by working memory deficits, which are thought to play an important role in determining whether syntax can be comprehended correctly, and neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) are thought to exacerbate these limitations. Furthermore, declines in processing speed appear to cause increasing difficulty in the proper allocation of cognitive resources necessary for sentence processing. Typically ageing adults may compensate for these deficits successfully when interpreting sentences using semantics or intact cognitive functions, but AD patients may exhibit deficits too severe for this to occur. The causes of syntax comprehension deficits in Alzheimer's are still contested, and may consist of language‐specific impairments or deficits in general cognition impacting linguistic behaviour. In this review, we aim to give an overview of the main markers of cognitive ageing and AD in the domain of sentence comprehension, as well as discuss potential underlying factors that may affect sentence comprehension in older speakers and Alzheimer's patients.

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Section: Ageing Memory and Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conclusion and Suggestions For Further Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sentence comprehension in ageing and Alzheimer's disease

Boxtel

Lawyer

2021

Language and Linguist. Compass

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“…As in Study 1, the strategies used were coded according to their effectiveness and the cognitive resources they require (0 for no strategy, 1 for strategy based on the morphological characteristics of words, 2 for repetition, 3 for sentence construction and 4 for mental imagery). The mean percentage of use of each strategy, as well as the number of strategies used were also calculated for the analyses (Chevalère et al., 2020).…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategy Use Mediates the Relation between Openness to Experience and Episodic Memory in Younger and Older Adults

Talpain

Soubelet

2020

Psychol Rep

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Previous research has shown that people with higher levels of Openness to Experience show higher levels of cognitive functioning. However, the mechanisms underlying this personality-cognition relation are not well understood. The goal of the current project was to examine whether strategy use mediates the relation between Openness to experience and retrospective memory, and whether the role of strategy use in the Openness-memory relation was the same in younger and older adults. Method: Two studies were conducted. In each of them, younger and older adults were administered a retrospective memory task (29 younger and 27 older in Study 1, 43 adults of all ages in Study 2). They were asked to report the strategies they used during the task, and to complete an Openness to Experience scale. Results: Consistent with previous reports, higher scores of Openness to experience and greater use of efficient memory strategies were associated with higher levels of memory performance. In addition, individual differences in memory strategy use mostly mediated the relation between Openness and memory performance. Results did not support a mediation model moderated by age. That is, the role of memory strategy use in the relation between Openness and memory was the same in younger and older adults. Conclusion: Higher levels of Openness are associated with better memory performance, mostly because people with higher levels of Openness use more efficient memory strategies.

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“…It is likely that participants engage in additional processes, such as grouping or chunking of the presented list (e.g., Belletier et al, Under review; Logie et al, 1996), that may serve to make representations less susceptible to disruption from ongoing processing. Older adults appear to be less efficient at this kind of processing (Naveh-Benjamin et al, 2007) or they may adopt a different, possibly more time consuming, approach to the task (Chevalère et al, 2020; Logie, 2018), which may have contributed to their larger dual task cost. Varying the time available for the full encoding and, possibly, strengthening (rehearsal/refreshing) of the to-be-remembered list prior to the onset of processing could conceivably modulate the dual task cost for both memory (overall accuracy) and processing (first RTs) and, more importantly, modulate age differences in these costs.…”

Section: Experiments 1: Time Between List Presentation and Processing...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the influence of temporal factors on age differences in working memory dual task costs.

Rhodes¹,

Doherty²,

Jaroslawska³

et al. 2021

Psychology and Aging

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Working memory is defined by many as the system that allows us to simultaneously store information over brief time periods while engaging in other information processing activities. In a previous study (Rhodes, Jaroslawska et al. (2019) Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148, 1204-1227 we found that retention of serially presented letters was disrupted by the introduction of an arithmetic processing task during a 10 second delay period. Importantly, the magnitude of this dual task disruption increased with age from 18 to 81. The demands of each task were adjusted prior to dual task so that age differences did not reflect baseline differences in single task performance. Motivated by these findings, theories of working memory, and additional analyses of processing reaction times from this previous experiment, we report two experiments, using the same tasks and adjustment procedure, attempting to modulate the magnitude of age differences in dual task effects via manipulations focused on time for encoding to-be-remembered material. Providing a delay prior to processing activities, to facilitate switching between the two tasks, did not modulate age differences. Neither did separating the to-be-remembered material temporally, to allow for the creation of more distinct representations. These findings provide two replications of our initial finding and suggest that age differences in working memory dual tasking are not due to limitations in the speed of encoding.

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Age-Related Changes in Verbal Working Memory Strategies

Cited by 11 publications

References 93 publications

Sentence comprehension in ageing and Alzheimer's disease

Sentence comprehension in ageing and Alzheimer's disease

Strategy Use Mediates the Relation between Openness to Experience and Episodic Memory in Younger and Older Adults

Exploring the influence of temporal factors on age differences in working memory dual task costs.

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