Long-term memory of haptic and visual information in older adults

ABSTRACT

The present study examined haptic and visual memory capacity for familiar objects through the application of an intentional free-recall task with three-time intervals in a sample of 78 healthy older adults without cognitive impairment. A wooden box and a turntable were used for the presentation of haptic and visual stimuli, respectively. The procedure consisted of two phases, a study phase that consisted of the presentation of stimuli, and a test phase (free-recall task) performed after one hour, one day or one week. The analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) indicated that there was a main effect only for the time intervals (F (2,71) = 12.511, p = .001, η² = 0.261), with a lower recall index for the interval of one week compared to the other intervals. We concluded that the memory capacity between the systems (haptic and visual) is similar for long retrieval intervals (hours to days).

KEYWORDS:

• Haptic memory
• visual memory
• free-recall
• perception
• aging

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the subjects whose participation made this study possible

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by funding from the Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES, Finance Code 001) to JCS and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPQ), Brazil, to BF-C (Project-Grant No. 307366/2017-0).