Memory for important item-location associations in younger and older adults.

Abstract

Older adults typically experience memory impairments for verbal and visuospatial episodic information, which are most pronounced for associative information. Although some age-related verbal memory deficits may be reduced by selectively focusing on high-value item information, the binding of items to locations in visuospatial memory involves different processes that are impaired in older adults. In the current study, we examined whether age-related impairment in visuospatial binding could be alleviated by strategic focus on important information and whether varying study time and presentation formats would affect such selectivity. We also used novel spatial resolutions analysis to examine participants' gist-based visuospatial memory with respect to information importance. Younger and older adults were presented with items worth different point values in a visuospatial display, either sequentially (Experiment 1) or simultaneously (Experiment 2). When items were presented sequentially, participants became more selective with task experience, but when items were presented simultaneously, selectivity was maintained throughout the task. These patterns were also observed when encoding time was reduced for younger adults. Although older adults successfully engaged in value-based memory strategies, age-related visuospatial memory deficits were still present, even for high-value information, consistent with the associative deficit hypothesis. However, under some conditions, older adults showed reduced spatial relocation errors for high-value item-location associations. The results suggest that strategic control can be used when binding information in visuospatial memory, and that both younger and older adults can benefit by focusing on high-value items and their locations, despite associative memory deficits present in old age. (PsycINFO Database Record

Strategic prioritisation enhances young and older adults’ visual feature binding in working memory

“…It also fits with research in episodic long-term memory showing that value-directed remembering effects remain constant with healthy ageing (e.g. Castel et al, 2002;Siegel & Castel, 2018), despite the overall effect of ageing not being reduced (as per the associative deficit hypothesis, Naveh-Benjamin, 2000;Old & Naveh-Benjamin, 2008; see also Ariel et al, 2015;Seigel & Castel, 2018). Note, further work would be useful to establish whether or not an even older (old-old) group of participants can benefit from value-directed remembering (see Castel et al 2011).…”

“…It is also in line with effects of value-directed remembering demonstrated by younger and older adults in the context of episodic long-term memory (e.g. Ariel et al, 2015;Siegel & Castel, 2018). This pattern of findings suggests that the associative deficit typically observed with ageing (Naveh-Benjamin, 2000;Old & Naveh-Benjamin, 2008) does not appear to be reduced with the value-based strategies that have been investigated thus far.…”

Multiple high-reward items can be prioritized in working memory but with greater vulnerability to interference

“…The present results are part of an emerging picture indicating that the direction of attention can influence visual memory, and that this can be achieved via different manipulations (e.g., Atkinson et al, 2018;Griffin & Nobre, 2003;Hu et al, 2014;Makovski & Jiang, 2007;Schmidt et al, 2002;Siegel & Castel, 2018;Thomas et al, 2016). While these findings generally indicate improved recall or recognition for the selected targets, differences are apparent in how such beneficial effects interact with features of the broader task context.…”

“…The visual environment tends to consist of numerous stimuli that vary in value and goal relevance, so such an ability would seem highly advantageous. Recent work by Siegel and Castel (2018) using an item-location binding task and arrays of 10 items (thus likely exceeding working memory capacity) provides some initial evidence that this is indeed possible. Furthermore, a large body of work now exists demonstrating that attention can be directed to certain items within a simultaneously encountered array through visual cues presented before (precueing) or after (retro cueing) target encoding, with resulting response accuracy and/or latency improvements for these cued items (e.g., Griffin & Nobre, 2003;Makovski & Jiang, 2007;Makovski, Sussman, & Jiang, 2008;Schmidt, Vogel, Woodman, & Luck, 2002;Shimi, Nobre, Astle, & Scerif, 2014;.…”

Age-related differences in associative memory: Empirical evidence and theoretical perspectives.

“…The articles by Siegel and Castel (2018) and by Hennessee et al (2018), mentioned above, seem to relate to some degree to agerelated declines during the encoding phase. The manipulation employed in these studies that involved the assigning of pointvalue to the different items/associations during encoding was probably used by participants in order to encode the items to a differential degree using different executive control processes, including additional attention to the items of high point-value and the binding of item and value, although declines in recollection-based processes could also be involved.…”