Recognition memory, remember/know judgments and retrieval of context in young and older adults: An ERP study.
Item
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Title
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Recognition memory, remember/know judgments and retrieval of context in young and older adults: An ERP study.
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Identifier
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AAI9830773
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identifier
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9830773
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Creator
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Trott, Charlotte T.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Walter Ritter
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Date
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1998
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Cognitive | Psychology, Experimental | Psychology, Psychobiology
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Abstract
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According to dual process theories of recognition memory, memory judgments can be made on the basis of episodic-(contextual) or familiarity-(automatic) based processes. Recognition that an item has been previously experienced (item memory) is thought to depend on medial-temporal lobe structures. Memory for the context in which that item occurred appears to involve the frontal lobes. Older adults perform more poorly than younger adults on direct memory tests. There is evidence that normal aging is associated with a decline in frontal lobe functioning. It is possible that the difficulty older people have with explicit memory is due to a decline in frontal lobe functioning leading to a greater deficit in contextual-compared to familiarity-based processing.;Sixteen young (21-28) and 16 older women (65-81) studied two lists of sentences, each with 2 unassociated nouns. In a subsequent memory test, they made old/new recognition judgments. For nouns judged old, Remember (contextual) vs. Know (familiarity), and list (temporal source) judgments were elicited. The groups did not differ in the percentage of correctly recognized old nouns (hits) or Remember vs. Know judgments, but the elderly were significantly poorer at correctly identifying the source of hits. Two ERP old/new effects were dissociable on the basis of latency, scalp distribution and age. For both young and old at posterior sites (400-800 ms), hits associated with Remember, Know, and list judgments elicited more positive ERPs than foils. The groups differed at prefrontal sites (800-1800 ms) where, for the young only, hits were associated with greater positivity than foils regardless of type of subsequent judgment, and hits with list incorrect were more positive than those with list correct.;The posterior old/new effect seen in both age groups may index item retrieval. The later, prefrontal effect seen only in the young may reflect the search for contextual information. The data suggest that the Remember, Know and list judgments reflect similar, but not identical, underlying neural and cognitive substrates. The lack of the prefrontal effect in older subjects is consistent with the hypothesis of a deficit in source memory contingent upon an age-related change in frontal lobe function.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
