The age-related associative deficit simulated by relational divided attention: encoding strategy and recollection

ABSTRACT

According to the associative deficit hypothesis, older adults experience greater difficulty in remembering associations between pieces of information than young adults, despite their relatively intact memory for individual items. It has been demonstrated that this deficit could be simulated by depleting resources for relational processing. The current study examines the possible mechanisms underlying this simulation. Item and associative memory were assessed using a process dissociation paradigm in which word pairs were encoded under full attention (FA) or relational divided attention (DA) conditions across three groups: FA older adults (n = 24), FA young adults (n = 24), and DA young adults (n = 24). Recollection and familiarity were estimated for the associative memory performance. Relative to FA young adults, both older adults and DA young adults showed an associative deficit, and reduced use of recollection and high-level relational encoding strategies. Regression analyses suggested that the effects of age and DA on associative memory were largely driven by the variance in recollection and encoding strategy use. The results suggest that depletion of attentional resources for relational processing impairs associative memory through disrupting the use of effective encoding strategies and recollection, which largely simulates age-related associative deficit.

KEYWORDS:

• Associative memory
• attentional resources
• encoding strategy
• recollection
• ageing

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the contributions of research assistants, Leen Nasser and Michelle Li, in data collection for this project. Part of the results from the current study was presented as a poster presentation at the 45th Annual Scientific and Educational Meeting of the Canadian Association on Gerontology in Montreal, ON. This work was based on the dissertation of Dr. Brenda I. Wong. Informed consent was collected from all participants at the beginning of their participation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). The data and related analysis files are available at osf.io/5jdfy (Lab, C. A., 2021).

Additional information

Funding

The project was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant (RGPIN-2014-06153; RGPIN-2020-04978) awarded to Lixia Yang. This study received ethics approval from Ryerson University Ethics Board (REB 2015-326).