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Full-Text Articles in Psychology
Exploring The Mechanisms That Underlie The Benefits Of Retrieval Practice In Younger And Older Adults, Ruth A. Shaffer
Exploring The Mechanisms That Underlie The Benefits Of Retrieval Practice In Younger And Older Adults, Ruth A. Shaffer
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The testing effect—or the benefit of retrieval practice to later memory—is often considered to be a recollection-related phenomenon. However, recent work (Shaffer & McDermott, 2020) has observed a benefit of testing to both recollection and familiarity processing on both immediate and delayed final tests. Further, although aging populations show marked declines in recollection, older and younger adults often benefit from testing to a similar degree (Meyer & Logan, 2013). This finding suggests that the testing effect in older adults may function via relatively preserved familiarity and lends further support to the notion that the testing effect does not function solely …
Quality Of Sleep, Stress, And Exercise: Effects Of Environmental And Lifestyle Factors On Spatial Navigation In Older Adults, Hannah Maybrier
Quality Of Sleep, Stress, And Exercise: Effects Of Environmental And Lifestyle Factors On Spatial Navigation In Older Adults, Hannah Maybrier
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Introduction: With increasing age, many adults experience reduced spatial navigation ability, with the most prominent reductions in tasks dependent on the hippocampus. Hippocampal dysfunction may be linked to age-related increases in sleep fragmentation, which results in reduced neurogenesis and long-term potentiation. This project aims to determine if age-related reductions in hippocampal-dependent navigation ability and strategy selection are mediated by impaired sleep. Further, we propose that the effects of sleep on navigation are moderated by psychological stress and physical activity. Methods: 36 older (m: 70, sd: 7) and 33 younger (m: 20, sd: 1.5) adults recorded one week of sleep via …
How Specific Is Domain-Specific Slowing? Evidence For A General Form Of A Domain-Specific Mechanism, Cynthia C. Flores
How Specific Is Domain-Specific Slowing? Evidence For A General Form Of A Domain-Specific Mechanism, Cynthia C. Flores
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Faces are special not just because our ability to quickly and accurately process faces is integral for social functioning throughout our lives, but also because faces are considered a unique class of visual stimuli (i.e., faces rely more on holistic processing than objects and there exist specialized, face-specific regions in the brain). Behavioral and neuropsychological research point to face processing as dissociable from other kinds of visuospatial processing. Although there is evidence that neural specificity for faces is retained in older adults, there is also evidence that age-related impairments are greater in face processing, relative to object processing. Using a …
Dissociable Effects Of Monetary, Liquid, And Social Incentives On Motivation Across The Adult Life Span, Jennifer Crawford
Dissociable Effects Of Monetary, Liquid, And Social Incentives On Motivation Across The Adult Life Span, Jennifer Crawford
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Humans are social creatures and, as such, can be motivated by aspects of social life, like approval from others, to guide decision-making in everyday life. Indeed, a common view in the aging literature is that older adults have a stronger orientation towards socioemotional goals or incentives, relative to other incentive modalities, like money, because of changing motivational priorities in older adulthood. In prior work, however, we found that older adults actually showed greater effects of monetary relative to primary (liquid) incentives, suggesting alternative interpretations of impaired motivational integration and/or slower adaptation to incentive conditions. The current study tested these alternatives, …
The Consequences Of Processing Of Goal-Irrelevant Information During The Stroop Task In Younger And Older Adults, Jessica Nicosia
The Consequences Of Processing Of Goal-Irrelevant Information During The Stroop Task In Younger And Older Adults, Jessica Nicosia
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Recent evidence from memory paradigms indicates that older adults can sometimes benefit more from processing goal-irrelevant information than younger adults, however these studies have often failed to simultaneously provide evidence of age-related control deficits. In the present experiments, participants initially studied a list of words. They then received a color-naming Stroop task where neutral words were either previously studied or new words. Across three experiments, participants were given different types of memory tests to examine the lingering effects of the neutral words during color-naming in younger and older adults. The results from all three experiments (including an attempted replication study) …
Exercise Engagement And Longitudinal Change In Alzheimer's Disease Biomarkers, Regional Brain Structure, And Cognitive Functioning, Marta Stojanovic
Exercise Engagement And Longitudinal Change In Alzheimer's Disease Biomarkers, Regional Brain Structure, And Cognitive Functioning, Marta Stojanovic
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
No abstract provided.
Just Don't Do It!: A Comparison Of Strategies For Reducing Commission Errors In Older And Younger Adults, Emily Streeper
Just Don't Do It!: A Comparison Of Strategies For Reducing Commission Errors In Older And Younger Adults, Emily Streeper
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Prospective memory (PM) commission errors occur when an individual erroneously repeats an intention that is finished and therefore no longer relevant (e.g., accidentally taking a medication one no longer needs to take). Commission errors have been observed in younger and older adults with age exacerbating commission error risk in select conditions. Only one prior study has used the finished paradigm to investigate the use of explicit strategies to reduce commission error rates in older adults. Bugg, Scullin, and Rauvola (2016) found that forgetting practice, an experience-based strategy, minimized commission errors to floor levels but a preparation-based strategy was ineffective. The …
Process Dissociation Analyses Of Memory Changes In Healthy Aging, Preclinical, And Very Mild Alzheimer Disease: Evidence For Isolated Recollection Deficits, Peter R. Millar
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Recollection and familiarity are independent processes that contribute to memory performance. Recollection is dependent on attentional control, which breaks down in early-stage Alzheimer disease (AD), whereas familiarity is independent of attention. The present study examines the sensitivity of recollection estimates based on Jacoby’s (1991) process dissociation procedure to AD-related biomarkers in a large sample of well-characterized cognitively normal older adults (N = 519) and the extent to which recollection discriminates these individuals from individuals with very mild symptomatic AD (N = 64). Participants studied word pairs, e.g., “knee bone,” then completed a primed, explicit, cued fragment-completion memory task, e.g., “knee …
Variable Semantic Input And Novel First-Language Vocabulary Learning, Nichole Runge
Variable Semantic Input And Novel First-Language Vocabulary Learning, Nichole Runge
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Vocabulary learning involves mapping a word form to a semantic meaning. An individual asked to learn the Spanish word for “apple,” for example, must map a new word form (manzana) onto the appropriate semantic representation. Previous studies have found that acoustic variability of word forms can improve second language vocabulary acquisition (Barcroft & Sommers, 2005; Sommers & Barcroft, 2007). The current experiments investigated whether variable semantic input could have a similar beneficial effect on first language vocabulary learning. Participants learned low-frequency English vocabulary words and their definitions. Half of the words were shown with the same verbatim definition …