Effects of changes in schematic support and of item repetition on age-related associative memory deficits: Theoretically-driven empirical attempts to reduce older adults' high false alarm rate.

Older adults seem to have a special difficulty binding components of their episodic memories to each other and retrieving these bound units. This phenomenon, known as the age-related associative memory deficit, is partially driven by high false alarm rates in the associative test. The current research examines whether 2 factors: (a) manipulations of changes of schematic support between study and test (potentially affecting recollection) and (b) item repetition (potentially affecting item familiarity) might decrease older adults' false alarm rate, thereby resulting in a smaller associative memory deficit. Younger and older adults were tested for their item and associative recognition memory after viewing product-price pairs (Experiment 1) and face-name pairs (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, products were paired with either an underestimated price, a market-value price, or an overestimated price, with the match or mismatch in the product-price relationships between study and test serving as the manipulation of schematic information. In Experiment 2, schematic information was manipulated by the match of the age of the face (young or old) appearing with a given name between study and test. Item familiarity was manipulated by having a preexposure phase of the item components in both experiments. Results indicated that low item familiarity (Experiment 2), which potentially reduces the familiarity of a given pair, and mismatch in schematic knowledge between study and test (Experiments 1 and 2), increase older adults' ability to reject recombined item-price and face-name pairs at retrieval, resulting in a reduced associative memory deficit. (PsycINFO Database Record

Older adults do not notice their names: a new twist to a classic attention task.

Although working memory spans are, on average, lower for older adults than young adults, we demonstrate in 5 experiments a way in which older adults paradoxically resemble higher capacity young adults. Specifically, in a selective-listening task, older adults almost always failed to notice their names presented in an unattended channel. This is an exaggeration of what high-span young adults show and the opposite of what low-span young adults show. This striking finding in older adults remained significant after controlling for working memory span and for noticing their names in an attended channel. The findings were replicated when presentation rate was slowed and when the ear in which the unattended name was presented was controlled. These results point to an account of older adults' performance involving not only an inhibition factor, which allows high-span young adults to suppress the channel to be ignored, but also an attentional capacity factor, with more unallocated capacity. This capacity allows low-span young adults to notice their names much more often than older adults with comparably low working memory spans do.

Does working memory change with age? The interactions of concurrent articulation with the effects of word length and acoustic confusion.

The effects of acoustic confusion (phonological similarity), word length, and concurrent articulation (articulatory suppression) are cited as support for Working Memory's phonological loop component (e.g., Baddeley, 2000 , Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 7, 544). Research has focused on younger adults, with no studies examining whether concurrent articulation reduces the word length and acoustic confusion effects among older adults. In the current study, younger and older adults were given lists of similar and dissimilar letters (Experiment 1) or long and short words (Experiment 2) for immediate serial reconstruction of order. Items were presented visually or auditorily, with or without concurrent articulation. As expected, younger and older adults demonstrated effects of acoustic confusion, word length, and concurrent articulation. Further, concurrent articulation reduced the effects of acoustic confusion and word length equally for younger and older adults. This suggests that age-related differences occur in overall performance, but do not reflect an age-related deficiency in the functioning of the phonological loop component of working memory.