PSY2004 W2 Cognitive Ageing Flashcards
How do crystallized abilities (semantic memory, SM) change with age?
SM improves across the lifespan due to acquired education/life experience and age-impaired brain areas being less involved in SM
How do fluid abilities (e.g., episodic memory, EM) change with age?
EM declines across the lifespan, with deficits greatest for associative/bound information that requires explicit recollection
How do processing speed and working memory (WM) contribute?
Older adults are slower overall compared to younger adults, but age differences in WM capacity are particularly important for fluid abilities
How does the Lifespan Perspective understand multidirectionality?
Baltes, 1987
Even within the same domain, diversity or pluralism are evident in the directionality of ontogenetic change. The direction of change depends on the behavior. Even within the same developmental period, some systems of behavior show increases while others show decreases in functioning.
What is the mechanics of intellingence?
The basic architecture of information processing and problem solving. It deals with the basic cognitive operations and cognitive structures associated with such tasks as perceiving and classification.
What are the pragmatics of intellingence ?
the content- and knowledge-related application of the mechanics of intelligence:
(a) fairly general systems of factual and procedural knowledge, such as crystalized intelligence,
(b) specialized systems of factual and procedural knowledge, such as occupational expertise, and
(c) knowledge about factors of performance or skills relevant for the activation of intelligence in specific contexts requiring intelligent action.
What are the different patterns found with cross-sectional vs longitudinal studies?
Hedden & Gabrieli, 2003 Nature Review Neuroscience
many abilities decline with age in cross-sectional studies, with some staying constant or showing a little improvement, data from the same study that are longitudinal show a much less of a dramatic drop off in performance, and declines are evident in all domains except for processing speed after 55.
How does age affect semantic memory?
meta-analysis Verhaeghen
Positive effect size: Older adults are performing better than younger adults.
Overall older adults are 0.80 SD’s higher in vocabulary than younger adults. (Cohen: large effect size). There is great variability in the strength of the effect sizes even though they are all positive.
How do older adults perform on vocab tests?
Outperform YA on vacb tests, espeically MCQs
The point is that older adults have just had more time and education to be exposed to this information, thereby causing them to show an age-related benefit compared to the typical decline we might expect in memory.
What is semantic memory/crystalized intellingende bound to?
Culturally bound knowledge. your ability to perform well on this test strongly relies on the fact that you have been exposed to this information before.
What is fluid intelligence?
are meant to test reasoning ability that is devoid of any cultural influence
What did Mayor et al. 1994 find?
Semantic Memory
accuracy on the specialized subject questions was not at all correlated with age, but general knowledge accuracy was positively correlated with age.
Semantic memory improves as people grow older, but more for general knowledge
What is the idea of network of nodes and semantic memory?
OA have a denser network of nodes that support their semantic memory. Measured implicitly by looking at semantic priming
What is semantic priming? How is it measured?
list of words and non-words and have to decide whether they are words or not as fast as they can
What is semantic priming effect?
observed when participants are slightly faster to respond to words that are related to the previously presented word versus unrelated
How is semantic memory underlined in the brain?
A diffuse network of brain regions. These brain areas are shared with other sensory/perception and motor/action areas. Less dependence on areas that decline in older age (e.g., hippocampus).
What is abstract reasoning?
It’s knowledge not based on culutral knowledge aka Fluid Intelligence
What are processes underlying our retrieval of events and episodes of our life (episodic memory)?
Recollection and Familiarity.
How do you test Recollection and Familiarity?
Episodic memory
Remember/know test.
if I present a series of words for participants to try to remember, I may then test them afterward during a recognition test where I re-present those words amongst entirely new words, and ask them for the words that they recognize as “old”
What is Recollection?
‘remember’ retrieving the specific contextual, associative perceptual ect details an event.
What is Familiarity?
‘know’ memory in the absence of retrieving specific details.
What is the dual process theory ?
Raz et al. longitudinal study
Investigated the brain regions that reduce in volume in healthy older age versus stay stable or show minimal reduction.
It is not just decline when it comes to the brain – there are select regions like the hippocampus and caudate nucleus that decline in structural integrity, whereas other areas like the entorhinal cortex remain relatively stable
What is Double dissociation and why is it important?
Dual process thoery Yonelinas et al. 2007
Link between recall and hippocampus vs. entorhinal cortex and recognition.
Important because these particular areas have been respectively linked to recollection and familiarity across the lifespan.
Results: performance on recall tests was more strongly associated with the structural integrity of the hippocampus, whereas performance on the recognition test was more strongly related to the volume of the entorhinal cortex.
