(Robert Sekuler, Michael J. Kahana, Chris McLaughlin, Julie Golomb and Arthur Wingfield)
Introduction
- Given: Rehearsable stimuli (such as words, letters, or sentences) is associated with diminished short-term memory with increasing age.
- Hypothesis: Tasks that involve visual stimuli will not be associated with diminished STM as age increases.
Brief Description of Study
- 2 study stimuli per trial followed by a probe stimulus.
- To better reveal the age-related differences in visual memory, the task was more challenging:
- Subjects were asked to encode to independent attributes:
- Two separate sinusoidal gratings (one vertical grating and one horizontal) — randomly varied.
- Subjects were asked to encode to independent attributes:
Method
- 15 younger adults, 15 older adults, equivalent in health, and post High School education.
- Example Trial (back of page):
- Saw 2 separate study stimuli.
- Followed by a pre-probe delay.
- The pre-probe delay varied from 1, 2, & 4 seconds to compare the rate at which information was lost from memory.
- Probe presented.
- Participant had to indicate if the probe presented was in one of the study stimuli.
- A tone immediately followed indicating their accuracy.
Results
- The two groups did not differ significantly in recognition accuracy.
- Young mean of correct responses was .68.
- Older mean of correct responses was .66.
- Effect of probe’s spatial frequency did not differ between groups.
- Accuracy was poorest when the probe’s frequency was in between stimulus 1 & 2.
- Reaction times after probe were statistically significant, p < .02.
Conclusions
- Older adults took significantly longer to make their recognition judgments.
- Accuracy was not different between younger and older adults.
- Between-trial variation in the critical orientation had no effect on response accuracy of RT.
- When visual memory is assessed in healthy older adults tested under conditions decreasing effects of age-related changes in vision, visual recognition memory seems to be unaffected by aging.
Robin Streit
Memory & Aging Lab
Presentation – December 5, 2007