Training Long-Term Memory for Events

Washington University, Saint Louis MO

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Everyday events, such as preparing a meal or working out at the local gym, make up the contents of our daily lives. Prior work has shown that perceiving these events in a normative fashion facilitates memory for the event (Sargent, et al., 2013). However, as a group, older adults and individuals with early-stage Alzheimer's Disease (AD) perceive events less normatively than their younger counterparts (Zacks, et al., 2006). Moreover, normative event perception has been associated with the efficient execution of everyday actions (Bailey, et al., 2013). The ability to remember everyday events and carry out everyday activities safely and efficiently are both important skills that serve to facilitate independent living in older adults. However, many interventions do not demonstrate such far-reaching effects (i.e. Richmond, et al., 2011). While many cognitive faculties, including event perception, are perturbed by old age, older adults and individuals with early-stage AD are known to have relatively intact implicit learning and implicit memory systems (Knopman & Nissen, 1987; Negash, et al., 2007; Rieckmann & Backman, 2009). The current proposal hypothesizes that by capitalizing on intact implicit cognitive systems by using implicit cueing methods older adults and individuals with early-stage AD might benefit in terms of both normalization in perception of events and improvements in memory for the event itself. Despite the obvious importance of these abilities, little is known about training methods that could serve boost event perception and event memory. In addition, implicit learning methods have not yet been embedded in rich, naturalistic materials such as those depicting everyday events. To this end, Studies 1-6 will test a variety of different implicit cues for the potential to encourage normative perception (i.e. implicit learning) of an event (Aim #1). Study 7 will investigate the extent to which implicit learning might generalize to untrained contexts and the visual behaviors associated with normative event perception and the sensitivity of the experimental measures to biomarkers associated with AD (Aims #1 & 3). Finally, Study 8 will test whether encouraging normative event perception with the use of implicit cues has an effect on subsequent memory for the event and whether event memory is sensitive to AD biomarkers (Aims #2 & 3). In addition, the extent to which visual behaviors present at important timepoints during the event is related to later event memory will be explored. I predict that (a) implicit cueing will encourage normative event perception, (b) that implicitly learned properties of normative event perception will transfer to uncued materials and (c) implicit learned properties governing normative event perception will have a positive impact on event memory.