The protective effect of educational level varies as a function of the difficulty of the memory task in ageing

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the effects of age and educational level on recall performance and organisational strategies used during recall as a function of the level of memory task difficulty.Younger (n = 55, age range = 20 -39 years) and older (n = 45, age range = 65 -75 years) adults learned a word list where the words were either already semantically grouped (easy) or presented in pseudo-random order (hard), and then recalled the words. The number of words recalled was calculated, and an index of clustering was computed to assess organisational strategies. Older adults recalled less words than the younger ones. Older adults with a higher educational level recalled more words than their counter-parts with a lower educational level when the memory task was easier, but they all performed similarly on the harder memory task. Moreover, we noted a strong positive association between educational level and semantic organisation in older adults when the memory task was easy. Regardless of educational level, older adults used semantic organisation as much as younger adults when the memory task was easy. However, when the memory task was harder, older adults showed significantly less organisational strategies than younger adults, the latter using semantic organisation to boost their recall performance. In sum, the protective effect of educational level seems to be restricted on recall performance, but not organisational strategies, in easy memory tasks providing sufficient external information about the most efficient mnemonic strategy to use.

The respective contribution of cognitive control and working memory to semantic and subjective organization in aging.

“…These two organizational strategies are generally expressed by the output order of recall. In the former case, categorical organization leads individuals to recall categorically related words in clusters, even when the items are presented in random order (Bousfield, 1953;Denney, 1974;Frick et al, 2022;Romney et al, 2016;Sauzéon et al, 2006;Taconnat et al, 2009Taconnat et al, , 2020 . Contrastingly, in the COGNITIVE CONTROL AND WORKING MEMORY IN MEMORY ORGANIZATION 6 latter case, episodic memory makes individuals to engage in a subjective organization of a list of unrelated items (i.e., items not constrained by pre-existing categorical or associative relations), as evidenced by the tendency to recall consecutively the same words across successive recall trials (Sauzéon et al, 2006;Sternberg & Tulving, 1977;Taconnat et al, 2020;Tulving, 1962) .…”

The respective contribution of cognitive control and working memory to semantic and subjective organization in aging.

“…These two organizational strategies are generally expressed by the output order of recall. In the former case, semantic (or categorical) organization leads individuals to recall semantically related words in clusters, even when the items are presented in random order (Bousfield, 1953;Denney, 1974;Frick et al, 2022;Romney et al, 2016;Sauzéon et al, 2006;Taconnat et al, 2009Taconnat et al, , 2020. Contrastingly, in the latter case, episodic memory makes individuals to engage in a subjective organization of a list of unrelated items (i.e., items not constrained by preexisting semantic or associative relations), as evidenced by the tendency to recall consecutively the same words across successive recall trials (Sauzéon et al, 2006;Sternberg & Tulving, 1977;Taconnat et al, 2020;Tulving, 1962).…”