The Associative Memory Deficit of Older Adults: Further Support Using Face-Name Associations.

Abstract

Previous studies have established an associative deficit hypothesis (Naveh-Benjamin, 2000), which attributes part of older adults' deficient episodic memory performance to their difficulty in creating cohesive episodes. In this article, the authors further evaluate this hypothesis, using ecologically relevant materials. Young and old participants studied name-face pairs and were then tested on their recognition memory for the names, faces, and the name-face pairs. The results extend the conditions under which older adults exhibit an associative deficit. They also show that reduced attentional resources are not the sole mediator of this deficit.Studies show that memory abilities decline in old age (e.g., Craik & Jennings, 1992;Salthouse, 1991). This decline, however, seems to be differential, characterizing only some memory functions, with episodic memory being particularly vulnerable to the effects of age (e.g., Craik, 1999;Light, 1991). Past research has tried to explain the mechanisms underlying the age-related decline in episodic memory, and several hypotheses have been advanced to explain this decline in memory performance in old age (see Light, 1991, for a review).Recently, Chalfonte and Johnson (1996) and Mitchell, Johnson, Raye, Mather, and D'Esposito (2000) suggested a binding deficit hypothesis, showing that older adults have a particular deficit in memory that requires the binding of information to contextual elements. Naveh-Benjamin (2000) extended this suggestion and proposed an associative deficit hypothesis (ADH), which focuses on the distinction between memory for single units and memory for the associations between these units. The ADH claims that older adults' deficiency in creating and retrieving links between single units of information is one of the main factors that leads to poorer episodic memory. The degree to which a given memory task requires the creation or use of such associations is a significant determinant of old people's memory performance.Naveh-Benjamin (2000) used procedures that allow the independent assessment of memory for component and for associative information (Humphreys, 1976; see the Methods section). The results of four studies provided support for the ADH by showing that older adults exhibit an associative deficit for different types of relationships, including interitem (word-word or nonword-word), as well as intraitem ones (a word and the font in which it was presented). Naveh-Benjamin, Hussain, Guez, and Bar-On (2003) have recently replicated some of these results by using item and associative recognition tests. In the Naveh-Benjamin et al. (2003) study, older adults were shown to be particularly deficient in memory tests that require associations. In addition, older adults showed an associative deficit even when pictures, which usually are remembered well by older adults, are used. Finally, the results of that study supported a prediction made by an ADH, namely, that older adults will show less of an associative deficit when the components of the episodes used are ...

High-confidence memory errors in old age: The roles of monitoring and binding processes

“…They found larger agerelated decline for associative than for item memory, in agreement with the associative deficit hypothesis of ageing (Naveh-Benjamin, 2000). According to this hypothesis, an important cause of poor episodic memory performance in older adults is their deficiency in creating and retrieving associations between single information units, including associations between different items, item and its context or item features (NavehBenjamin, Brav, & Levy, 2007;Naveh-Benjamin, Guez, Kilb, & Reedy, 2004;Naveh-Benjamin, Hussain, Guez, & Bar-On, 2003). However, when separately examining hits (i.e., correct response to studied pairs) and false alarms to rearranged pairs (i.e., wrongly accepting a recombined pair in which both of the presented items were studied but not together), the authors found that age differences in associative memory were mainly driven by age differences in false alarms.…”

“…We assessed measures of binding (FaceÁName task; Naveh-Benjamin et al, 2004) and executivefrontal functioning (Wisconsin Card Sorting Task; Heaton, Chelune, Talley, Kay, & Curtis, 1993) to help relate age differences in false memory in the CR task more directly to the contrasting mechanisms. We did not assume that these covariate tasks purely measure binding or executive functioning, respectively.…”

Associative and strategic components of episodic memory: A life-span dissociation.

“…Using a joint memory paradigm requiring recognition of items and associations between item pairs (cf. Humphreys, 1976), Naveh-Benjamin and colleagues (Naveh-Benjamin, 2000;Naveh-Benjamin, Brav, & Levy, 2007;Naveh-Benjamin et al, 2004;Naveh-Benjamin, Guez, & Marom, 2003;Naveh-Benjamin, Hussain, et al, 2003) consistently demonstrated that older adults showed deficits in encoding and retrieving associations among items. This decrease in the ability to remember compound information could not be attributed solely to older adults' deficit in remembering individual items, as negative age differences in item recognition memory were negligible and/or controlled for.…”

Age-related associative deficits are absent with nonwords.

“…Only four of these studies had comparable measures of both item and associative memory and were therefore able to demonstrate larger associative memory deficits than item memory deficits in older adults: Naveh- Benjamin et al (2004; and Bastin and Van der Linden (2005) did not associate the faces to novel stimuli so only half of the stimuli were novel; Bastin and Van der Linden (2006) used pairs of unrelated faces, but item memory age differences were probably restricted by ceiling effects (proportion correct for item recognition was 0.93 for both young and older adults), making the comparison between item and associative memory age deficits difficult to interpret.…”