Abstract

A number of recent studies have shown that the ability to accurately recall bound object and spatiotemporal aspects of an experienced event develops gradually in children and is greatly impaired in the elderly, reflecting developmental discontinuities in the integrity of the underlying medial temporal lobe network. Using a novel What-Where-When (WWW) visuospatial reconstruction task, the experiential memory performance of a group of healthy older adults (aged 60–80) was compared to that of a group of younger adults (aged 20–40). Both groups were equated on their general cognitive ability, their executive functioning, and on the presence of depression, anxiety, and stress symptomatology. As hypothesized, the performance of the older adults in the binding task was significantly lower, with younger participants recalling three times the amount of bound object and spatiotemporal triads than their older counterparts. Psychomotor speed was found to be lower in older adults and was the only neuropsychological index to significantly affect success on the WWW binding task. Based on this and other relevant studies, the selective associative memory impairment obtained using a non-verbal What-Where-When paradigm emerges as a marker for the detection of early pre-clinical signs of experiential memory pathology.

摘要

最近的一些研究表明，准确回忆所经历事件的绑定对象和时空方面的能力在儿童中逐渐发展，在老年人中严重受损，反映了潜在内侧颞叶网络完整性的发育不连续性。使用小说What-Where- When ( WWW) 视觉空间重建任务，将一组健康老年人（60-80 岁）的体验记忆表现与一组年轻人（20-40 岁）的体验记忆表现进行比较。两组在一般认知能力、执行功能以及抑郁、焦虑和压力症状学方面的表现是相同的。正如假设的那样，老年人在绑定任务中的表现明显较低，年轻参与者回忆起绑定物体和时空三元组的数量是年长者的三倍。发现老年人的精神运动速度较低，并且是唯一显着影响WWW成功的神经心理学指标绑定任务。基于这项研究和其他相关研究，使用非语言What-Where-When范式获得的选择性联想记忆障碍成为检测体验记忆病理学早期临床前迹象的标志。