Do Healthy Elders, Like Young Adults, Remember Animates Better Than Inanimates? An Adaptive View

Abstract

Background/Study Context: It has been found that young adults remember animates better than inanimates. According to the adaptive view of human memory, this is due to the fact that animates are more important for fitness purposes than inanimates. This effect has been ascribed to episodic memory, where older people exhibit difficulties.

Methods: Here the authors investigated whether the animacy effect in memory also occurs for healthy older adults. Older and young adults categorized words for their animacy characteristics and were then given an unexpected recognition test on the words using the Remember/Know paradigm. Executive functions were also evaluated using several measures.

Results: For both overall Recognition and Remember responses, a reliable animacy effect on hit rates was found in young but not in older adults. Controlling for certain executive functions led to reliable and comparable animacy effects in both groups. There was no reliable effect of animacy on Know responses.

Conclusion: Thus, unlike young adults, older adults do not remember animates better than inanimates; this pattern can be attributable to a decline in executive functions.

FUNDING

This work was supported by a grant from the Institut Universitaire de France to the third author.

Notes

¹ Recollection and familiarity can be computed in different ways. Thus, R/K responses are interpreted differently depending on the models considered; for instance, in models based on the Tulving’s (1985) memory system, R responses are considered as episodic memory. Some authors have proposed a dual-process signal detection model in which Remember and Know responses are broken down into a discrete recollection component and a continuous familiarity component, respectively, based on an equal variance signal detection model (Yonelinas, Kroll, Dobbins, Lazzara, & Knight, 1998). In order to compare index data, we have computed two indices (one for recollection and one for familiarity) based on a dual-process signal detection model (Yonelinas et al., 1998). Analyses based on Recollection and Familiarity discrimination indices yielded the same pattern of results as analyses based on R and K responses.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Institut Universitaire de France to the third author.