Effects of ageing on associative memory for related and unrelated pictures

Abstract

Associative memory deficits are pervasive with age. Memory for complex pictures, however, also seems to require the association of several scene elements into one representation, but picture memory is often age-invariant. We speculated that the natural relationships contained in pictures may explain this distinction and that memory for scenes with unusual novel relationships would be affected with aging. In three experiments, we found that, counter to our predictions, the relatedness of scene elements exerted little influence on picture memory and did not differentially affect older compared to younger adults. These data suggest that the semantically rich associations contained in pictures need not rely on prior knowledge and experiences in order to support age-invariant picture memory. Our results indicate that associative memory for complex pictures may differ from memory for interitem associations, which may be more affected by aging.

Age-related associative deficits are absent with nonwords.

“…This conclusion also applies to at least one study of picture memory: Hess and Slaughter (1990) found that age differences were reduced when memorizing combinations of household objects in organized scenes compared with unorganized scenes. On the other hand, Gutchess and Park (2009) measured associative memory for objects situated in regular or irregular backgrounds (e.g., a cow in a farm or a laundry room). Regular combinations did not reduce age differences compared to irregular combinations when associating the objects to the backgrounds.…”

The Role of Perceptual Information in Familiarity-Based Scene Recognition

“…That being said, recent studies have suggested familiarity is not affected by age or cognitive impairment when the materials consist of images (see e.g. Ally, Gold, & Budson, 2009;Ballesteros, Reales, & Mayas, 2007;Gutchess & Park, 2009;O'Connor & Ally, 2010). Likewise, we know people remember images better than words ("the picture superiority effect," see e.g.…”

“…Dewhurst & Conway, 1994;Nelson, Reed, & Walling, 1976;Paivio, 1971Paivio, , 1986 and picture memory does not seem to differ in healthy young people and adults (see e.g. Gutchess & Park, 2009;Park, Puglisi, & Smith, 1986;Park, Smith, Morrell, Puglisi, & Dudley, 1990;Smith, Park, Cherry, & Berkovsky, 1990;Smith, Park, Earles, Shaw, & Whiting, 1998). Therefore, it seems that a procedure based on recognition of pictures of everyday scenes could be a suitable procedure to overcome the limitations inherent in using verbal materials (see e.g.…”

m1 Acetylcholine Receptor Expression is Decreased in Hippocampal CA1 region of Aged Epileptic Animal

“…The OD analysis was carried out bilaterally in hippocampal in fields including the stratum oriens and CA1 pyramidal layer. Three fields of 300 µm 2 were randomly used for analysis of CA1 area. In order to reduce any variation in the staining signal intensity among different sections and animals, the illumination was kept constant and checked regularly during images acquisitions.…”

“…Impairment of learning and memory functions in the elderly have been extensively described [1,2], as well as its worsening when associated with the epileptic condition [3,4]. It has been proposed that alterations in cholinergic neurotransmission in the hippocampus may contribute to these cognitive deficits [5], both during natural aging [6,7] and under some pathological states [8].…”