ABSTRACT

According to the associative deficit hypothesis, older adults experience greater difficulty in remembering associations between pieces of information than young adults, despite their relatively intact memory for individual items. It has been demonstrated that this deficit could be simulated by depleting resources for relational processing. The current study examines the possible mechanisms underlying this simulation. Item and associative memory were assessed using a process dissociation paradigm in which word pairs were encoded under full attention (FA) or relational divided attention (DA) conditions across three groups: FA older adults (n = 24), FA young adults (n = 24), and DA young adults (n = 24). Recollection and familiarity were estimated for the associative memory performance. Relative to FA young adults, both older adults and DA young adults showed an associative deficit, and reduced use of recollection and high-level relational encoding strategies. Regression analyses suggested that the effects of age and DA on associative memory were largely driven by the variance in recollection and encoding strategy use. The results suggest that depletion of attentional resources for relational processing impairs associative memory through disrupting the use of effective encoding strategies and recollection, which largely simulates age-related associative deficit.

摘要

根据联想缺陷假说，尽管老年人对单个项目的记忆相对完整，但他们在记住信息片段之间的关联方面比年轻人更难。已经证明可以通过耗尽关系处理的资源来模拟这种缺陷。当前的研究检查了这种模拟背后的可能机制。使用过程分离范式评估项目和联想记忆，其中单词对在三组的完全注意 (FA) 或关系分割注意 (DA) 条件下进行编码：FA 老年人 ( n  = 24)、FA 年轻人 ( n  = 24) 和 DA 年轻人 ( n = 24）。对联想记忆性能估计了回忆和熟悉程度。相对于 FA 年轻人，老年人和 DA 年轻人都表现出联想缺陷，并减少了回忆和高级关系编码策略的使用。回归分析表明，年龄和 DA 对联想记忆的影响主要是由回忆和编码策略使用的差异驱动的。结果表明，关系处理的注意力资源耗尽会通过破坏有效编码策略和回忆的使用来损害联想记忆，这在很大程度上模拟了与年龄相关的联想缺陷。