The effects of interword spacing on the eye movements of young and older readers

Recent evidence indicates that older adults (aged 65+) are more disrupted by removing interword spaces than young adults (aged 18–30). However, it is not known whether older readers also show greater sensitivity to the more subtle changes to this spacing that frequently occur during normal reading. In the present study the eye movements of young and older adults were examined when reading texts for which interword spacing was normal, condensed to half its normal size or expanded to 1.5 times its normal size. Although these changes in interword spacing affected eye movement behaviour, this influence did not differ between young and older adults. Furthermore, a word frequency manipulation showed that these changes did not affect word identification for either group. The results indicate that older adults can adapt their eye moment behaviour to accommodate subtle changes in the spatial layout of text equally effectively as young adults.     

False memories: young and older adults think of semantic associates at the same rate, but young adults are more successful at source monitoring

Two experiments explored whether the higher vulnerability to false memories in the DRM (J. Deese, 1959; H. L. Roediger & K. B. McDermott, 1995) paradigm in older compared to young adults reflects a deficit in source monitoring. In both experiments, adding together the number of falsely recalled critical lures and the number of critical lures produced on a post-recall test asking participants to report items that they had thought of but did not recall, indicated that the critical lures were activated during the experiment equally often in young and older adults. However, older adults were more likely than young adults to say that they had actually heard the lures. When strongly encouraged to examine the origin of memories (Experiment 2), the warning substantially reduced false recall in young but not older adults. These results are consistent with the idea that older adults have more difficulty later identifying the source of information that was activated as a consequence of intact semantic activation processes.     

Sleep facilitates consolidation of positive emotional memory in healthy older adults

ABSTRACT

Evidence has demonstrated that sleep-related memory consolidation declines in ageing. However, little is known about age-related changes to sleep-related emotional memory consolidation, especially when considering the positivity effect observed in older adults. In the present study, we sought to explore whether there is a positive emotional bias in sleep-related memory consolidation among healthy older adults. Young and older adults were randomly assigned either into a sleep or wake condition. All participants encoded positive, negative, and neutral stimuli and underwent recognition tests immediately (test 1), after a 12-hour sleep/wake interval (test 2), and 3 days after test 2 (test 3). Results showed that age-related differences of sleep beneficial effect were modulated by emotion valence. In particular, sleep selectively enhanced positive memory in older adults, while in young adults sleep beneficial effect was manifested in neutral memory. Moreover, the sleep beneficial effect can be maintained at least 3 days in both young and older adults. These findings suggest that older adults had preserved but positive bias of sleep-related memory consolidation, which could be one of the underlying mechanisms for their generally better emotional well-being in daily life. These findings highlight the dynamic interplay among sleep and emotional memory in older adults.     

Dissociations in perceptual learning revealed by adult age differences in adaptation to time-compressed speech

When presented with several time-compressed sentences, young adults' performance improves with practice. Such adaptation has not been studied in older adults. To study age-related changes in perceptual learning, the authors tested young and older adults' ability to adapt to degraded speech. First, the authors showed that older adults, when equated for starting accuracy with young adults, adapted at a rate and magnitude comparable to young adults. However, unlike young adults, older adults failed to transfer this learning to a different speech rate and did not show additional benefit when practice exceeded 20 sentences. Listeners did not adapt to speech degraded by noise, indicating that adaptation to time-compressed speech was not attributable to task familiarity. Finally, both young and older adults adapted to spectrally shifted noise-vocoded speech. The authors conclude that initial perceptual learning is comparable in young and older adults but maintenance and transfer of this learning decline with age.     

Eye movements of young and older adults during reading

The eye movements of young and older adults were tracked as they read sentences varying in syntactic complexity. In Experiment 1, cleft object and object relative clause sentences were more difficult to process than cleft subject and subject relative clause sentences; however, older adults made many more regressions, resulting in increased regression path fixation times and total fixation times, than young adults while processing cleft object and object relative clause sentences. In Experiment 2, older adults experienced more difficulty than young adults while reading cleft and relative clause sentences with temporary syntactic ambiguities created by deleting the that complementizers. Regression analyses indicated that readers with smaller working memories need more regressions and longer fixation times to process cleft object and object relative clause sentences. These results suggest that age-associated declines in working memory do affect syntactic processing.     

老年人对情绪性事件的情景模拟:回忆过去与想象未来

研究采用自传体访谈技术,首次考察了老年人在对情绪性事件进行回忆和想象中生成的内部细节和外部细节数量,及其对回忆和想象内容的主观评估。结果发现:(1)无论是回忆还是想象任务,老年人都比年轻人提供了更少的内部细节和略多的外部细节;(2)与年轻人相似,老年人在想象未来积极事件时产生了更多的内部细节,表现出对积极信息的加工偏好;(3)老年人比年轻人更倾向于认为想象的事件与过去发生的事件相似度高,表明该群体在想象过程中更多地依赖了过去的记忆。该结果揭示了老年人对情绪性事件的回忆和想象特点,说明在回忆和想象过程中出现的与年龄有关的缺陷同样会体现在情绪性事件中,这很好地支持了建构性情景模拟假说。     

Age and individual differences in visuospatial processing speed: Testing the magnification hypothesis

Forty young adults and 40 older adults performed seven visuospatial information processing tasks. Factor analyses of the response times (RTs) yielded a single principal component with a similar composition in both age samples. For both samples, regressing the mean RTs of fast and slow subgroups for the seven tasks (18 conditions) on the corresponding mean RTs for their age group accounted for 99% of the variance. Taken together, these findings suggest that individual differences in processing time were largely task independent. The magnification hypothesis, a simple mathematical model of the interaction between age and ability, is presented. This model correctly predicts the finding that in both the young and the older adult groups, individual differences increased systematically with task difficulty. The magnification hypothesis also explains the regression parameters describing individual differences among young adults and predicts correctly that equivalent parameters describe individual differences among older adults. According to the magnification hypothesis, the RTs of slower individuals are more affected by aging than those of faster individuals, and slower individuals may be more at risk with respect to other biological insults (e.g., changes in health status) as well.     

How young and older adults differ in their responses to perceived age discrimination

The authors examined the consequences of perceived age discrimination for well-being and group identification. The rejection-identification model suggests that perceived discrimination harms psychological well-being in low status groups but that group identification partially alleviates this effect. The authors hypothesized that this process model would be confirmed among older adults because their low status group membership is permanent but not confirmed among young adults whose low status is temporary. Using structural equation modeling, the authors found support for the hypothesized direct negative link between perceived age discrimination and well-being among older adults, with increased age group identification partially attenuating this effect. For young adults, these relationships were absent. Differences in responses to discrimination appear to be based on opportunities for leaving a low status group.     

Age differences in trade-off decisions: older adults prefer choice deferral

Our primary purpose in this study was to examine age differences in using choice deferral when young and older adults made trade-off decisions. Ninety-two young and 92 older adults were asked to make a trade-off decision among four cars or to use choice deferral (i.e., not buy any of these cars and keep looking for other cars). High and low emotional trade-off difficulty were manipulated between participants through different attribute labels of available cars. Older adults were more likely than young adults to choose deferral. Older adults who used deferral reported less retrospective negative emotion than those who did not.     

Ageing and autobiographical memory for emotional and neutral events

We investigated age-related effects in recall of emotional and neutral autobiographical memories. Protocols were scored according to episodic and non-episodic detail categories using the Autobiographical Interview. Young adults recalled a greater number of episodic details compared to older adults, whereas older adults recalled more semantic details, replicating previous findings. Both young and older adults' emotional memories contained more overall detail than neutral ones, with the enhancement from emotion-specific to episodic details, but this did not alter the effect of age group on the pattern of episodic and semantic details. However, the age effect on episodic details was attenuated for neutral autobiographical memories. The findings suggest that age differences for emotional autobiographical recollection might reflect a more general pattern of age-related changes in memory, with impaired recall of episodic components and relative sparing of semantic aspects of autobiographical memory in older adults when compared to young adults.     

基于N2pc成分的视觉空间注意功能老化机制

视觉空间注意是人的一种基本认知功能,对老年人的生活有重要影响。N2pc作为一种与注意选择相关的ERP成分,可以反映注意资源在空间上的分配,是研究视觉空间注意的一个良好指标。本文对此前基于N2pc成分的注意功能老化研究进行了综述。前人研究主要采用视觉搜索范式与空间线索范式。采用视觉搜索范式的研究发现,当目标周围有干扰子时,目标诱发的N2pc在老年人中振幅减小,潜伏期延迟,同时在行为上老年人与年轻人相比,正确率更低,反应时更长; 当目标周围无干扰子时,目标诱发的N2pc振幅老年人与年轻人相当或比年轻人更大,老年人的正确率与年轻人无显著差异。采用空间线索范式的研究发现,与目标无相同特征的线索奇异子(singleton cue)不会诱发N2pc,与目标有相同特征的线索奇异子诱发的N2pc未表现出年龄差异,差异体现在一种反映抑制的ERP成分—Pd上(年轻人有Pd而老年人没有),此时老年人在行为上表现出比年轻人更强的空间线索效应。这些研究共同说明,视觉空间注意功能的老化是一个复杂的过程,涉及到搜索目标时注意分配速度的减慢,对干扰子抑制能力的下降以及基于特征的注意捕获能力的良好保持。     

Age effects on the control of dynamic balance during step adjustments under temporal constraints

This study investigated the age effects on the control of dynamic balance during step adjustments under temporal constraints. Fifteen young adults and 14 older adults avoided a virtual white planar obstacle by lengthening or shortening their steps under free or constrained conditions. In the anterior–posterior direction, older adults demonstrated significantly decreased center of mass velocity at the swing foot contact under temporal constraints. Additionally, the distances between the ‘extrapolated center of mass’ position and base of support at the swing foot contact were greater in older adults than young adults. In the mediolateral direction, center of mass displacement was significantly increased in older adults compared with young adults. Consequently, older adults showed a significantly increased step width at the swing foot contact in the constraint condition. Overall, these data suggest that older adults demonstrate a conservative strategy to maintain anterior–posterior stability. By contrast, although older adults are able to modulate their step width to maintain mediolateral dynamic balance, age-related changes in mediolateral balance control under temporal constraints may increase the risk of falls in the lateral direction during obstacle negotiation.     

语言能力的老化机制：语言特异性与非特异性因素的共同作用

语言能力的衰退是由于一般认知能力衰退引起的, 还是由于语言加工系统的衰退引起的, 抑或是两者的共同作用?研究中测量了青年组和老年组的一般认知能力(加工速度、工作记忆和抑制能力), 以及在词汇、句子和语篇三个水平上的语言理解能力和语言产生能力。结果发现, 一般认知能力、语言理解和语言产生能力都存在年老化现象。分层回归分析表明, 一般认知能力对语言能力的贡献, 以及语言理解能力和产生能力之间的相互贡献在青年组和老年组中是不同的, 且存在词汇、句子和语篇水平上的差异。在词汇水平上, 青年人的成绩能够被一般认知能力和另一种语言能力所显著预测, 而老年人的成绩却不受一般认知因素影响; 在句子水平上, 青年人的成绩仍能被一般认知能力或另一种语言能力所解释, 但这两类变量都无法预测老年人的任务成绩; 在语篇水平上, 青年人理解任务的成绩显著地受到产生能力影响, 而老年人的理解和产生任务成绩则分别可以被一般认知能力和语言理解能力所解释。对组间差异的回归分析表明, 一般认知能力和另一种语言能力对组间差异都有显著贡献, 且前者的贡献大于后者。上述研究结果表明, 语言能力的老化是语言特异性因素和非特异性因素共同作用的结果。     

Memory Scanning Performance in Healthy Young Adults,Healthy Older Adults,and Individuals with Dementia of the Alzheimer Type

A memory scanning (Sternberg, 1966, 1975) task was administered to healthy young adults, older adults, and two groups of individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) to determine age- and disease-related changes in the retrieval of information from short-term memory. Healthy older adults, in comparison to healthy young adults, displayed increases in both slopes and intercepts in memory scanning. Individuals at various stages of DAT (very mild, mild, moderate) displayed increases in both slopes and intercepts compared to nondemented age-matched control individuals. There was also some evidence that DAT individuals are more likely to engage in a self-terminating search instead of an exhaustive search of short-term memory.     

Prospective memory in young and older adults: the effects of ongoing-task load

Prospective memory involves remembering to perform intended actions in the future. Previous work with the multinomial model of event-based prospective memory indicated that adult age-related differences in prospective-memory performance were due to the prospective (not the retrospective) component of the task (Smith & Bayen, 2006 , Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32, 623). However, ongoing-task performance was also lower in older adults in that study. In the current study with young and older adults, the difficulty of the ongoing task was manipulated by varying the number of colors per trial to create easier and harder versions of the ongoing task for each age group. The easier version included 2 colors per trial for older adults and 4 colors for young adults. The harder version included 4 colors for older adults and 6 colors for young adults. By adjusting the ongoing-task difficulty, older adults were able to perform the ongoing task as well or better than the young adults. Analyses with the multinomial model revealed that making the ongoing task easier for older adults (or more difficult for young adults) did not eliminate age-related differences in prospective-memory performance and the underlying prospective component.     

Dynamic postural stability is not impaired by moderate-intensity physical activity in healthy or balance-impaired older people

Older people are increasingly being encouraged to be more physically active but this may lead to physiological fatigue, tiredness and other effects, which, at high levels, can adversely alter postural stability. However, older adults rarely perform physical activity at high intensities. This study aimed to determine whether a single bout of moderate-intensity physical activity, similar to that experienced during daily living, alters dynamic postural stability, particularly among those at risk of falling. Thirty-one healthy young, 33 healthy older and 21 balance-impaired older, adults performed a rapid, voluntary step-up task before and immediately after a 14 min, self-paced, moderate-intensity physical activity protocol. Timing of step components from vertical ground reaction forces, mediolateral displacement of center of pressure, and onset and amplitude of hip abductor muscle activity were recorded during the step task. All groups demonstrated the same changes after the activity, with slightly shorter weight-shift phase duration, smaller displacement of the center of pressure towards the stance leg during weight shifting, and earlier onset of stance leg gluteus medius activity. These changes indicate improved coordination of the step task after activity. Thus this study showed that dynamic postural stability is not adversely affected immediately following moderate-intensity physical activity, even among balance-impaired elderly.     

Age-related changes in grip force and dynamics of hand movement

The authors investigated whether older adults (n = 16; mean age = 65 years) increased grip force to compensate for load force fluctuations during up and down movements more than young adults did (n = 16; mean age = 24 years) and whether older and young adults exhibited similar adaptation of grip force to alterations in friction associated with changes in object surface texture. As previously reported, older adults used a higher level of grip force than young adults during static holding. Increased grip force was observed in the older group during movement. The increase was appropriate to the lower coefficient of friction estimated for the older group. In both groups, grip force was greater with a smooth than with a rough surface (the latter having the higher coefficient of friction) during static holding and during movement. Moreover, grip force modulation was equally well synchronized with load force fluctuation during movement in the two groups. The authors concluded that changes in organization of grip force with age are well adapted to change in hand-object interface properties. Elevated grip force in older adults does not necessarily signify a fundamental change in synchronizing grip force modulation with load force fluctuation.     

Do alternative names block young and older adults' retrieval of proper names?

This study evaluates whether tip of the tongue experiences (TOTs) are caused by a more accessible word which blocks retrieval of the target word, especially for older adults. In a "competitor priming" paradigm, young and older adults produced the name of a famous character (e.g., Eliza Doolittle) in response to a question and subsequently named a picture of a famous actor or actress depicting this character (e.g., Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle). Older adults produced more TOTs than young adults, but prior production of a related character name did not affect TOTs, although it did reduce incorrect responses. There were no age differences in knowledge of films and TV and thus the age-related increase in TOTs is not because older adults have more relevant knowledge. The findings are compatible with models in which alternate words are a consequence not a cause of TOT.     

Comparing music- and food-evoked autobiographical memories in young and older adults: A diary study

Previous research has found that music brings back more vivid and emotional autobiographical memories than various other retrieval cues. However, such studies have often been low in ecological validity and constrained by relatively limited cue selection and predominantly young adult samples. Here, we compared music to food as cues for autobiographical memories in everyday life in young and older adults. In two separate four-day periods, 39 younger (ages 18–34) and 39 older (ages 60–77) adults recorded their music- and food-evoked autobiographical memories in paper diaries. Across both age groups, music triggered more frequent autobiographical memories, a greater proportion of involuntary memories, and memories rated as more personally important in comparison to food cues. Age differences impacted music- and food-evoked memories similarly, with older adults consistently recalling older and less specific memories, which they rated as more positive, vivid, and rehearsed. However, young and older adults did not differ in the number or involuntary nature of their recorded memories. This work represents an important step in understanding the phenomenology of naturally occurring music-evoked autobiographical memories across adulthood and provides new insights into how and why music may be a more effective trigger for personally valued memories than certain other everyday cues.     

The benefits and costs of repeated memory tests for young and older adults

Repeated and prolonged searches of memory can lead to an increase in how much is recalled, but they can also lead to memory errors. These 3 experiments addressed the costs and benefits of repeated and prolonged memory tests for both young and older adults. Participants saw and imagined pictures of objects, some of which were physically or conceptually similar, and then took a series of repeated or prolonged recall tests. Both young and older adults recalled more on later tests than on earlier ones, though the increase was less marked for older adults. In addition, despite recalling less than did young adults, older adults made more similarity-based source misattributions (i.e., claiming an imagined item was seen if it was physically or conceptually similar to a seen item). Similar patterns of fewer benefits and more costs for older adults were seen on both free and forced recall tests and on timed and self-paced tests. Findings are interpreted in terms of age-related differences in binding processes.