The Von Restorff effect in ageing and Alzheimer’s disease

Vitali, Paolo; Minati, Ludovico; Chiarenza, Giuseppe A.; Brugnolo, Andrea; Girtler, Nicola; Nobili, Flavio; Leo, C. Di; Rosati, Paola; Rodriguez, Guido

doi:10.1007/s10072-006-0662-3

Cited by 17 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Also, similar levels of the isolation effect were shown across age groups when the distinctive item was radically different from the other items, such as digits presented in a list of words (Smith, 2011). Furthermore, reduced age differences were shown in an examination of isolation effects based on font size in which younger adults reported greater spontaneous use of elaborative semantic encoding strategies than older adults (Vitali et al, 2006) strategies that may have attenuated the intended isolation effect in younger adults.…”

mentioning

confidence: 81%

Age-related differences in memory after attending to distinctiveness or similarity during learning

Carr

Castel

Knowlton

2014

Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition

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Age-related differences in memory after attending to distinctiveness or similarity during learning Episodic memory is vulnerable to age-related change, with older adults demonstrating both impairments in retrieving contextual details and susceptibility to interference among similar events. Such impairments may be due in part to an age-related decline in the ability to encode distinct memory representations. Recent research has examined how manipulating stimulus properties to emphasize distinctiveness can reduce agerelated deficits in memory. However, few studies have addressed whether learning strategies that differentially encourage distinctiveness processing attenuate age-related differences in episodic memory. In the present study, participants engaged in two incidental encoding tasks emphasizing either distinctiveness or similarity processing. Results demonstrated higher rates of recollection for stimuli studied under the distinctiveness task than the similarity task in younger but not older adults. These findings suggest a declining capacity for distinctiveness processing to benefit memory in older adults, and raise the possibility that strategies that enhance gist-based encoding may attenuate age-related memory deficits.

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mentioning

confidence: 81%

Age-related differences in memory after attending to distinctiveness or similarity during learning

Carr

Castel

Knowlton

2014

Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition

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“…Geraci et al (2009) suggested that older adults lack the attentional control necessary for observing a strong isolation effect. Vitali et al (2006) reported an isolation effect in older adults free from cognitive impairment that was not observed in a comparison group with Alzheimer's disease. These researchers suggested that the unimpaired participants responded to stimulus novelty with increased encoding and visual-perceptual processing; however, Alzheimer's participants failed to engage in extra processing of isolated items.…”

Section: Attention and The Midlist Isolation Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting von Restorff’s early isolation effect

Schmidt

2016

Mem Cogn

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An item that is conceptually or physically different from other items in a series is often remembered well. This isolation effect has been found independent of the position of the isolated item in the list, suggesting that special attention to or processing of the isolated item is not a necessary precondition of the effect. Three experiments are reported that challenge this conclusion. In Experiment 1a, we compared memory for conceptually isolated items to memory for the same items in unrelated and homogeneous lists. Under moderately distracting conditions, isolation effects were observed with midlist but not with early isolates. In fact, early isolation impaired memory for the conceptually distinct items relative to the same items in homogeneous lists. Experiment 1b replicated this memory impairment for early conceptual isolates and extended it to nondistracting conditions. In Experiment 2, we focused on early isolation, manipulating the type of isolation and whether or not participants performed judgments of learning (JOLs). An early isolation effect was observed for numbers isolated in lists of words (and vice versa), but not for conceptual isolates. Performing the JOL task reduced the size of the early isolation effect. These results suggest that number/word stimulus contrasts are coded automatically and support an isolation effect independent of list position. However, conceptual contrasts require relational processing and will only support an early isolation effect when such processing occurs. The results of Experiments 1a, 1b, and 2 suggest that attentional resources during list presentation and a favorable retrieval environment combine to support good memory for distinctive events.

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“…In contrast, Vitali et al (2006) found no age difference in isolation effects using sequential presentation of 10 words, with the isolate twice the size of non-isolates, followed by free recall. In the control condition, all words were the same size.…”

Section: Isolation Effects In Older Adultsmentioning

confidence: 63%

“…Currently, only five studies exist where isolation effects have been compared between young and older participants (Bireta et al, 2008;Cimbalo & Brink,1982;Geraci, McDaniel, Manzano, & Roediger, 2009;Smith, 2011;Vitali et al, 2006). In these studies, isolation effects for older participants compared to young participants were the same (Geraci et al, 2009;Vitali et al, 2006), reduced (Bireta et al, 2008), or absent for older participants yet present in young participants (Cimbalo & Brink, 1982); Smith (2011) found a mixture of age differences within her study.…”

Section: Isolation Effects In Older Adultsmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…In these studies, isolation effects for older participants compared to young participants were the same (Geraci et al, 2009;Vitali et al, 2006), reduced (Bireta et al, 2008), or absent for older participants yet present in young participants (Cimbalo & Brink, 1982); Smith (2011) found a mixture of age differences within her study. This indicates that isolation effects across age are sensitive to experimental design, which differed between these studies.…”

Section: Isolation Effects In Older Adultsmentioning

confidence: 84%

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Age-related associative deficits and the isolation effect

Badham

Maylor

2013

Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition

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If all but one of the items in a list are similar (e.g., all black except one red), memory for the different item is enhanced (the isolation effect). Older adults generally show similar or smaller isolation effects compared to young adults, which has been attributed to age-related deficits in associative memory whereby older adults are less able to associate an isolated stimulus to its isolating feature. Experiment 1 examined the isolation effect for isolation based on spatial position, modality and color; in Experiment 2, the criterion for isolation was the associative relation between stimuli. The results consistently showed no differences between young and older participants in the magnitude of the isolation effect. Whilst age deficits in associative memory may act to reduce the isolation effect in older adults, age deficits in self-initiated processing and inhibitory functionality may counteract this reduction by enhancing the isolation effect in older adults.

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The Von Restorff effect in ageing and Alzheimer’s disease

Cited by 17 publications

References 12 publications

Age-related differences in memory after attending to distinctiveness or similarity during learning

Age-related differences in memory after attending to distinctiveness or similarity during learning

Revisiting von Restorff’s early isolation effect

Age-related associative deficits and the isolation effect

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