Working Memory for Item and Temporal Information in Younger and Older Adults

Two experiments examined age differences in mechanisms hypothesized to affect activation of item and temporal information in working memory. Activation levels were inferred from the ability to reject n-back lures matching items in different temporal positions. Information with the least decay had a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 2008-09, Vol.15 (5), p.574-600
Main Authors: McCabe, Jennifer, Hartman, Marilyn
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Adult. Elderly
Age differences
Aged
Aging - psychology
Attention
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition
Context memory
Developmental psychology
Discrimination Learning
Female
Field Dependence-Independence
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Male
Memory, Short-Term
Middle Aged
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Practice (Psychology)
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychomotor Performance
Serial Learning
Temporal memory
Working memory
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Two experiments examined age differences in mechanisms hypothesized to affect activation of item and temporal information in working memory. Activation levels were inferred from the ability to reject n-back lures matching items in different temporal positions. Information with the least decay had a performance advantage over less recent information, but was susceptible to the same temporal context errors found in all adjacent-to-target lure positions. Lures most distant from the current item showed a performance rebound. The pattern of increased magnitudes of age effects at adjacent-to-target positions indicated a reduction in older adults' working memory for temporal context information above and beyond item memory declines. Results overall support the emphasis on context information as a critical factor in working memory and cognitive aging.
ISSN:1382-5585
1744-4128
DOI:10.1080/13825580801956217