Age Effects in Attention &Memory: Process Dissociations

Washington University, Saint Louis MO

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The major focus of this proposal is older adults? vulnerability to interference effects. The proposed research combines basic research aimed at answering questions about age differences in vulnerability to interference with research aimed at improving the diagnosis and treatment of age-related memory deficits. A major issue for age-related memory deficits is the involvement of medial-temporal and frontal lobe functions-functions that show large decline with aging and play a major role in vulnerability to interference effects. This proposal describes 4 interrelated lines of research, each with its own specific aim. Specific Aim 1: Develop behavioral procedures to further document and explore older adults? greater vulnerability to interference effects, and show the utility of a dual-process model that distinguishes between recollection and automatic (implicit) use of memory to understand older adults? greater vulnerability. Specific Aim 2: Further explore older adults?, as compared to young adults?, dramatically high level of false "remembering" and false "seeing" in high-interference situations, and integrate those effects on subjective experience into the dual-process model used to describe effects on accuracy. Specific Aim 3: Relate individual differences among older adults in vulnerability to interference, as revealed by effects on accuracy and subjective experience, to medial-temporal and frontal functions using neuropsychological tests, and develop training procedures that will diminish vulnerability to interference. Development of training procedures builds on Specific Aims 1 and 2, and individual differences in effectiveness of training procedures are predicted to be diagnostic with regard to the locus of deficit. Specific Aim 4: More directly relate age differences in memory to neural structures by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) procedures. The aim of experiments in that series is to show that changes in neural activation result from training that reduces age difference in vulnerability to interference.