Feature Binding of Common Everyday Items Is Not Affected by Age

Abstract

There is a surge of studies confirming that old age spares the ability to bind in visual working memory (VWM) multiple features within singular object representations. Furthermore, it has been suggested that such ability may also be independent of the cultural background of the assessed individual. However, this evidence has been gathered with tasks that use arbitrary bindings of unfamiliar features. Whether age spares memory binding functions when the memoranda are features of everyday life objects remains less well explored. The present study investigated the influence of age, memory delay, and education, on conjunctive binding functions responsible for representing everyday items in VWM. We asked 32 healthy young and 41 healthy older adults to perform a memory binding task. During the task, participants saw visual arrays of objects, colours, or coloured objects presented for 6 s. Immediately after they were asked either to select the objects or the colours that were presented during the study display from larger sets of objects or colours, or to recombine them by selecting from such sets the objects and their corresponding colours. This procedure was repeated immediately after but this time providing a 30 s unfiled delay. We manipulated familiarity by presenting congruent and incongruent object-colour pairings. The results showed that the ability to bind intrinsic features in VWM does not decline with age even when these features belong to everyday items and form novel or well-known associations. Such preserved memory binding abilities held across memory delays. The impact of feature congruency on item-recognition appears to be greater in older than in younger adults. This suggests that long-term memory (LTM) supports binding functions carried out in VWM for familiar everyday items and older adults still benefit from this LTM support. We have expanded the evidence supporting the lack of age effects on VWM binding functions to new feature and object domains (i.e., everyday items). We have confirmed that education does not negatively impact on such ability at old age. Such results have important implications for the selection of culturally unbiased tests to screen for abnormal ageing trajectories.

Refining understanding of working memory buffers through the construct of binding: Evidence from a single case informs theory and clinical practise

“…The task has been described in details elsewhere (Hoefeijzers et al., 2017). Briefly, the procedure was very similar to the binding tasks described above.…”

New perspectives on binding in visual working memory

“…For conjunctions of different surface features (such as colour and shape), a host of studies has found little indication of a specific decrement of binding memory with age, even though overall memory performance is generally worse in older than younger adults (Brockmole, Parra, Della Sala, & Logie, ; Parra, Abrahams, Logie, & Della Sala, ; Isella, Molteni, Mapelli, & Ferrarese, ; Read, Rogers, & Wilson, ; Hoefeijzers, González Hernández, Magnolia Rios, & Parra, ; with conflicting results only in a single experiment in Brown & Brockmole, ). In contrast, some earlier studies did report a specific decrement in performance for tasks requiring binding of features or objects to location (Brockmole & Logie, ; Cowan et al ., ; Mitchell, Johnson, Raye, & D'Esposito, ; Mitchell, Johnson, Raye, Mather, & D'Esposito, ).…”

Visual short-term memory through the lifespan: preserved benefits of context and metacognition

“…By providing information as to what went where, context could potentially confer an even greater benefit in older than younger adults, if it reduces binding errors that are otherwise more common in older adults. As a caveat, however, binding errors are not found in all circumstances and may depend on task details (Brockmole et al, 2008;Parra et al, 2009;Allen et al, 2013;Pertzov et al, 2015;Hoefeijzers et al, 2017). Furthermore, it might be that older adults do (or could) more strongly exploit the strategy of elaborating on the relationships between items.…”

“…colour/orientation/location) and encoding durations (e.g. 200 -2000 ms), although the age-related binding errors may be specific to reporting what went where, rather than bindings between non-spatial features (Brockmole et al, 2008;Parra et al, 2009;Hoefeijzers et al, 2017).…”