ABSTRACT Healthy older adults show impaired relational learning, but improved transitive expression when inferences are made across pre-experimentally known premise relations. Here, we used the transitivity paradigm to ask whether the organizational structure within schemas facilitates the bridging of relations for novel inference for otherwise healthy older adults who are exhibiting early signs of cognitive decline (“at-risk” older adults), and individuals with single- or multiple-domain amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). Relational learning was impaired in the two older adult groups, but transitive expression was facilitated by prior semantic knowledge of relations. Prior semantic knowledge did not improve novel inference for aMCI individuals. Schematic scaffolding can successfully support inference in preclinical cognitive decline, but such cognitive support may no longer be useful later in the disease process when dysfunction in neural circuitry may be too severe. The findings encourage future work of semantic knowledge and inference in larger samples of aMCI cases.

中文翻译：

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现有的语义知识为早期认知衰退的推理提供了示意性支架，但在遗忘型 MCI 中则不然

摘要 健康的老年人表现出受损的关系学习，但当跨实验前已知的前提关系进行推断时，传递表达得到改善。在这里，我们使用传递范式来询问模式内的组织结构是否有助于为表现出认知衰退早期迹象的健康老年人（“有风险的”老年人）和单身人士建立新的推理关系。 - 或多域遗忘性轻度认知障碍 (aMCI)。两个老年人组的关系学习受损，但关系的先验语义知识促进了传递表达。先前的语义知识并没有改善 aMCI 个体的新推理。示意图支架可以成功地支持临床前认知能力下降的推理，但是当神经回路功能障碍可能太严重时，这种认知支持可能在疾病过程的后期不再有用。这些发现鼓励了未来在 aMCI 案例的更大样本中进行语义知识和推理的工作。