Psy 4072 Study Guide Topic Information Processing Attention Memory Chapter 6 General slowing hypothesis o Reaction times in older people are slower than that of younger people o The increase in reaction time reflects a general decline of information processing speed within the nervous system of an aging individual Selectivity capacity and vigilance aspects of attention o Selectivity selected vs inhibited information Early vs late selection use of dichotic listening tasks cocktail party phenomenon Early vs late harder with age Spotlight spatial locations enhanced superimposed objects obstacles Hard with age as well directed attention Visual search task A methodology used to study selective attention in the lab Participants are asked to look for a certain target defined by its features o Types of Disjunctive the target is different from distractors in only one feature Conjunctive the target varies by 2 or more features from the distractors This one is harder for older people Older adults show less selective processing of target stimuli than do And they show greater susceptibility to non target interference than do younger adults younger adults o Capacity only so much you can hold unfamiliar info Pool of attentional resources available to support cognitive processes Effortful processes requires attention and effort Automatic processes do not require attention and are not influenced by practice or experience but some of these can become automatic Divided attention such as driving declines with age Kahneman Available pool of resources Automatic just happens Some take effort trying very hard to master something o Hold up well across lifespan Effortful processes may show age related declines Performance trade offs between focus vs divided attention conditions Simple vs complex tasks o Vigilance over time Readiness for detecting a stimulus change Example air traffic controller Sustained attention tasks Maintain attention to sensory events for a prolonged amount of time Vigilance performance how they perform Vigilance decrement how they decline over time Age differences in vigilance performance No differences in vigilance decrement Older adults less accurate and slower Changes due to Response criterion Perceptual sensitivity Memory as a multidimensional construct o It is not viewed as a single entity o Sensitivity due to changes in memory ability o Individual differences in memory abilities to older adults wide differences o Memory is not an on off switch works better on some days than others Different forms of memory working memory semantic episodic and procedural memory well with age o Working memory o Semantic memory mental dictionary facts we have known forever holds up Holds information about the meaning of words o Episodic memory storing and retaining personally experienced events Katrina personal big decline with age experience to events episodes in our lives o Procedural memory holds information about how to do things Can t access it verbally can t explain it Piano baseball etc Recall versus recognition tests of memory Normal memory aging o Doesn t mean anything but happens more frequently when you age o Examples are Misplacing glasses Forgetting where you put your keys Pathological memory aging o Desired response does not come back behaviors may reflect underlying brain pathology AAMI age associated memory impairment Structural functional and contextual views of memory o Structural early information processing models focused on stores these stores presumably contain memory traces that vary in content Research has focused on Capacity of each store Rate of forgetting Codes formed within each store Control and rehearsal processes These models are attractive because they lead to a clearly defined program of research Sensory memory Short term memory less than 30 seconds can hold it there by repeating Long term memory Remote memories DECLINES Limitations include how you can t explain things related to the quality of encoding and you can t explain the context dependency of memory Brain is not like a file cabinet stories can be reconstructed If short term is just passively holding info older people do just as well When it becomes more complicated that s when you see the problem o Functional Iconic visual less than one second Echoic auditory 4 6 seconds Assume that memory processes are jointly determined by mental operations and environmental cues Encoding processes interpretations of stimulus patterns Retrieval processes reinstatement of the initial encoding operations Recognition cued recall free recall struggle huge differences with older and younger people Limitations include circular reasoning o Contextual assumes that the characteristics of people task demands and the test materials all interact with each other to influence memory performance Environmental support hypothesis assumes an age related reduction in processing resources Older people will have trouble with self initiated processing operations like encoding and retrieval ACTIVE multisite memory study Memory training memory improvement techniques o Mnemonics are strategies to help us remember Verbal mnemonics possibly mediate associations between words and Visually based mnemonics possibly mediate associations between words ideas and ideas Classic mnemonic techniques Method of loci Pegword method Limitations on use with older adults must address issues such as individual differences techniques specifically for older adults long term effectiveness they don t like to do them Topic Language Problem Solving Intelligence Chapter 7 Preserved and impaired language skills o Older adults have been shown to have more problems with the mental components of intelligence Deteriorate across the lifespan Lexical skills show declines Naming skills Definitional skills Discourse production shows declines telling a story Comprehension of spoken language slows Drawing inferences in written discourse Verbal fluency Verbal analogies o Ones that DO NOT DECLINE with age Verbal abilities Vocab tests Organization of semantic memory Word association Spread of activation No differences between young and old automatic Cognitive and social aspects of language Definitions of intelligence o Ability to learn reasoning o Ability to organize experience and recognize relationships reasoning o Effective utilization of stored information accumulating o Capacity of modifying the environment reasoning Everyday problem solving o Drawing inferences in written