Effects of normal aging on memory for multiple contextual features.

@article{citeulike:1251496, abstract = {Twenty-four younger (18-35 years) and 24 older adult participants (65 or older) were exposed to three experimental conditions involving the memorization words and their associated contextual features, with contextual feature complexity increasing from Conditions 1 to 3. In Condition 1, words presented varied only on one binary feature (color, size, or character), while in Conditions 2 and 3, words presented varied on two and three binary features, respectively. Each condition was carried out as follows: (1) learning of a word list; (2) encoding of words and their contextual features; (3) delay; and (4) memory for contextual features through a discrimination task. Results indicated that young adults discriminated more features than older adults on all conditions. In both age groups, contextual feature discrimination accuracy decreased as the number of features increased. Moreover, older adults demonstrated near floor performance when tested with two or more binary features. We conclude that increasing context complexity strains attentional resources.}, address = {School of Psychology, Pavillon Montpetit, 410A, University of Ottawa, CP 450, Succ A, Ottawa, Ont., Canada KIN 6N5.}, author = {Gagnon, Sylvain and Soulard, Kathleen and Brasgold, Melissa and Kreller, Joshua }, citeulike-article-id = {1251496}, doi = {10.1016/j.bandc.2007.03.003}, issn = {0278-2626}, journal = {Brain Cogn}, keywords = {aging, attention, attention-visual, jessica, working-memory}, month = {April}, posted-at = {2007-04-26 00:49:52}, priority = {2}, title = {Effects of normal aging on memory for multiple contextual features.}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2007.03.003}, year = {2007} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:1251496 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1251496 TI - Effects of normal aging on memory for multiple contextual features. JF - Brain Cogn AD - School of Psychology, Pavillon Montpetit, 410A, University of Ottawa, CP 450, Succ A, Ottawa, Ont., Canada KIN 6N5. SN - 0278-2626 N2 - Twenty-four younger (18-35 years) and 24 older adult participants (65 or older) were exposed to three experimental conditions involving the memorization words and their associated contextual features, with contextual feature complexity increasing from Conditions 1 to 3. In Condition 1, words presented varied only on one binary feature (color, size, or character), while in Conditions 2 and 3, words presented varied on two and three binary features, respectively. Each condition was carried out as follows: (1) learning of a word list; (2) encoding of words and their contextual features; (3) delay; and (4) memory for contextual features through a discrimination task. Results indicated that young adults discriminated more features than older adults on all conditions. In both age groups, contextual feature discrimination accuracy decreased as the number of features increased. Moreover, older adults demonstrated near floor performance when tested with two or more binary features. We conclude that increasing context complexity strains attentional resources. KW - aging KW - attention KW - attention-visual KW - jessica KW - working-memory AU - Gagnon, Sylvain AU - Soulard, Kathleen AU - Brasgold, Melissa AU - Kreller, Joshua PY - 2007/04/20/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2007.03.003 ER -