Differential effects of aging on memory for content and context: A meta-analysis.

Abstract

The authors reviewed the evidence of age differences in episodic memory for content of a message and the context associated with it. Specifically, the authors tested a hypothesis that memory for context is more vulnerable to aging than memory for content. In addition, the authors inquired whether effort at encoding and retrieval and type of stimulus material moderate the magnitude of age differences in both memory domains. The results of the meta-analysis of 46 studies confirmed the main hypothesis: Age differences in context memory are reliably greater than those in memory for content. Tasks that required greater effort during retrieval yielded larger age differences in content but not in context memory. The greatest magnitude of age differences in context memory was observed for those contextual features that were more likely to have been encoded independently from content. Possible mechanisms that may underlie age differences in context memory-attentional deficit, reduced working memory capacity, and failure of inhibitory processing are discussed.

A diffusion model analysis of adult age differences in episodic and semantic long-term memory retrieval.

“…Age-related deficits in any component of context processing (encoding, storage/forgetting, retrieval) should lead to declines in the drift parameter ( ), which represents the quality of the retrieved information. If age-related declines in this parameter are greater for episodic retrieval than for semantic retrieval, this would be particularly strong support for the contextmemory deficit hypothesis (e.g., Light, 1996Light, , 2000bSpencer & Raz, 1995).…”

“…The hypothesis that aging leads to disproportionate declines in context processing was first formulated in the early 1980s (e.g., Burke & Light, 1981;Rabinowitz & Ackerman, 1982) and continues to be a central theme of research on cognitive aging (e.g., Braver et al, 2001). Age differences in memory tasks tend to increase as a function of the tasks' reliance on memory for contextual detail (for empirical and theoretical reviews, see Light, 1996;2000b;Spaniol & Bayen, 2004;Spencer & Raz, 1995;Verhaeghen, Marcoen, & Goossens, 1993;Zacks et al, 2000). Older adults' poor performance on tasks with high context reliance has been attributed to age deficits in specific cognitive processes such as self-initiated processing (e.g., Craik, 1986Craik, , 1994, recollection (e.g., Jacoby, 1999), or associative encoding (e.g., Naveh-Benjamin, 2000).…”

Use it or lose it? SES mitigates age-related decline in a recency/recognition task

“…Memory for contextual features, especially spatiotemporal aspects, appears to be particular vulnerable to increasing age [60], compared to simple recognition of the item as "old" (item memory). Because of this dissociation, it is useful to compare item and source memory within the same group.…”

“…the conscious recollection of the context in which an event took place) is typically compromised (e.g. [18,60,68]). Notably, large individual differences exist among older adults in the extent to which their memory as well as other cognitive functions are preserved during aging.…”

“…We hypothesized that older adults with higher SES would be more capable than older adults with low SES of using compensatory strategies to maintain relatively high levels of recency memory performance. As described below, the latter assesses the retrieval of temporal context, a memory function that is particularly compromised in older adults [60]. Further, based on fMRI and ERP evidence reviewed below, we hypothesized that these efforts would be accompanied by differential frontal brain activity in this group compared to older adults with low SES and young adults.…”