1,721,040 research outputs found
Emotional working memory and Alzheimer's disease
Full text linkA number of recent studies have reported that working memory does not seem to show typical age-related deficits in healthy older adults when emotional information is involved. Differently, studies about the short-term ability to encode and actively manipulate emotional information in dementia of Alzheimer’s type are few and have yielded mixed results. Here, we review behavioural and neuroimaging evidence that points to a complex interaction between emotion modulation and working memory in Alzheimer’s. In fact, depending on the function involved, patients may or may not show an emotional benefit in their working memory performance. In addition, this benefit is not always clearly biased (e.g., towards negative or positive information). We interpret this complex pattern of results as a consequence of the interaction between multiple factors including the severity of Alzheimer’s disease, the nature of affective stimuli, and type of working memory task
Towards a New Account of Cognitive Aging: The Cognitive-Emotional Trade-Off in Working Memory
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The role of encoding in reality monitoring: a running memory test with Alzheimer's type dementia
No full textReality monitoring refers to the discrimination between memories of internal and external events (e.g., Johnson & Raye, 1981). A total of 28 healthy older adults and 28 older adults with Alzheimer's type dementia (DAT) were asked to perform or to imagine performing simple action statements in a running memory test. This task required participants to tell whether the action statement had been carried out or imagined, or whether it was new at unpredictable intervals. The results indicated that older adults with DAT had greater difficulty in reality monitoring than did the healthy control group. The finding is discussed in terms of the role of working memory functions in reality monitoring
The Role of Cognitive Operations in Reality Monitoring: a study with healthy older adults and Alzheimer’s Type Dementia
No full textThe authors examined the role of cognitive operations in discriminations
between externally and internally generated events (e.g., reality monitoring) in healthy
and pathological aging. The authors used 2 reality-monitoring distinctions to manipulate
the quantity and quality of necessary cognitive operations: discriminating between I performed
versus I imagined performing and between I watched another perform versus I
imagined another performing. Older adults had more difficulty than did younger adults
when discriminating between memories in both versions of the task. In addition, older
adults with Alzheimer’s-type dementia showed marked difficulties when attributing a
source to imagined actions. The authors interpret these findings in terms of an age difficulty
or the failure to use cognitive operations as useful cues during source monitoring
When touch matters: An affective tactile intervention for older adults
No full textAim: Our goal was to test the hypothesis that positive tactile experiences can lead to an improvement in cognitive, emotional skills and perceived quality of life in a group of healthy community-dwelling older adults. Methods: During a 10-week period, older adults completed a series of activities that required manipulating either a piece of velvet, a piece of canvas or velcro. Results: Only older adults who worked with velvet showed an increase in cognitive and emotional skills, and the perceived quality of life. Conclusion: Our study is one of the first to show that positive tactile experiences might have a beneficial effect on the psychological well-being of healthy community-dwelling older adults across different domains. © 2012 Japan Geriatrics Society
Centenarians' "holy" memory: is being positive enough?
No full textThe authors compared 18 centenarians' (M age = 100.1years, SD = 1.8years) recognition memory for emotional (positive, negative, and religious) pictures with 18 older adults (M age = 75.2years, SD = 6.8years). Participants observed a series of images that varied in emotional valence and meaning and were later asked to discriminate between old and new images in a series of pictures that included studied images as well as new images. Centenarians showed decreased recognition memory for positive and negative images items compared with older adults, F(1, 34) = 9.82, p <.01. In addition, a significant age by valence interaction was observed highlighting how centenarians remembered religious pictures better while older adults favoured positive information when only positive pictures were taken into consideration. Results are interpreted in terms of possible age-linked changes in meaningful goals that lead centenarians to focus on meaningful religious self-relevant information rather than simply on positive information. © 2013 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Motivated goal pursuit and working memory: Are there age-related differences?
No full textThe influence of motivated behaviors linked to achievement goal pursuit on age-related differences in working memory (WM) has not been extensively investigated. In this study, younger and older participants completed a classical 2-back working memory task that included different types of goal-relevant stimuli. In particular, in Experiment 1 we used euro banknotes as stimuli, whereas in Experiment 2 we used Neapolitan playing cards. In Experiment 3, we directly compared working memory performance for euros and Neapolitan playing cards. We chose stimuli to induce different motivated behaviors linked to the pursuit of achievement goals (e.g., mastery, self-referential vs. performance, normative-based) and to examine their effects on working memory performance. Results showed how older adults were able to recognize target stimuli as well as younger adults when stimuli were goal-relevant. However, Neapolitan playing cards produced a greater number of errors, especially in the older adults. Finally, in Experiment 4, the same pattern of results occurred when motivated behavior was promoted using a dispositional induction technique. Our results show that motivated behaviors evoked by qualitatively diverse achievement goals can modulate WM performance in aging
When spatial and temporal contiguities help the integration in working memory: “A multimedia learning” approach
No full textTwo experiments examined the effects of spatial and temporal contiguities in a working memory binding task that required participants to remember coloured objects. In Experiment 1, a black and white drawing and a corresponding phrase that indicated its colour perceptually were either near or far (spatial study condition), while in Experiment 2, the colour phrase and the black and white drawing were presented either simultaneously or sequentially (temporal study condition). Results showed that the absence of contiguity negatively affected binding performance. Data is discussed in line with theoretical and multimedia models of integrative processes in working memory
Where Did I Put My Keys? - A ‘We' Intervention to Promote Memory in Healthy Older Adults: A Controlled Pilot Study
No full textBackground: Numerous behavioural studies have shown
that older adults have more difficulty in binding things together and have underlined the corresponding importance
of this function in everyday memory tasks. Objective: This
study was designed to test a new brief inter-dependent selfknowledge intervention on memory functions in aging.
Methods: Before engaging in a working memory task based
on binding objects and their locations, half of the participants read a series of paragraphs that focused on the individual self and were written in the first person singular ‘I’ ( independent self-knowledge), whereas the other half read
paragraphs that focused on the relational self and were written in the first person plural ‘We’ ( inter-dependent self-knowledge). Results: Results showed that older adults who were
trained with ‘We’ passages were more successful in remembering objects and their location compared to the group of
participants who were trained with ‘I’ passages. Conclusion:
These findings are discussed in terms of the role that social
factors may have in favouring memory functions in aging
and delineate a new cognitive clinical protocol based on an
inter-dependent self-knowledge approach
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