Dataset Information

Age-related deficits in selective attention during encoding increase demands on episodic reconstruction during context retrieval: An ERP study.

ABSTRACT: Previous event-related potential (ERP) and neuroimaging evidence suggests that directing attention toward single item-context associations compared to intra-item features at encoding improves context memory performance and reduces demands on strategic retrieval operations in young and older adults. In everyday situations, however, there are multiple event features competing for our attention. It is not currently known how selectively attending to one contextual feature while attempting to ignore another influences context memory performance and the processes that support successful retrieval in the young and old. We investigated this issue in the current ERP study. Young and older participants studied pictures of objects in the presence of two contextual features: a color and a scene, and their attention was directed to the object's relationship with one of those contexts. Participants made context memory decisions for both attended and unattended contexts and rated their confidence in those decisions. Behavioral results showed that while both groups were generally successful in applying selective attention during context encoding, older adults were less confident in their context memory decisions for attended features and showed greater dependence in context memory accuracy for attended and unattended contextual features (i.e., hyper-binding). ERP results were largely consistent between age groups but older adults showed a more pronounced late posterior negativity (LPN) implicated in episodic reconstruction processes. We conclude that age-related suppression deficits during encoding result in reduced selectivity in context memory, thereby increasing subsequent demands on episodic reconstruction processes when sought after details are not readily retrieved.

SUBMITTER: James T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5319869 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Age-related deficits in selective attention during encoding increase demands on episodic reconstruction during context retrieval: An ERP study.

James Taylor T Strunk Jonathan J Arndt Jason J Duarte Audrey A

Neuropsychologia 20160416

Previous event-related potential (ERP) and neuroimaging evidence suggests that directing attention toward single item-context associations compared to intra-item features at encoding improves context memory performance and reduces demands on strategic retrieval operations in young and older adults. In everyday situations, however, there are multiple event features competing for our attention. It is not currently known how selectively attending to one contextual feature while attempting to ignore ...[more]

PMID: 27094851

Similar Datasets

Project description:There has been surprisingly little examination of how recall performance is affected by processing demands induced by retrieval cues, how manipulations at encoding interact with processing demands during maintenance or due to the retrieval cue, and how these are affected with aging. Here, we investigate these relationships by examining the fidelity of working memory recall across two delayed reproduction tasks with a continuous measure of report across the adult lifespan. Participants were asked to remember and subsequently reproduce from memory the identity and location of a probed item from the encoding display. In Experiment 1, we examined the effect of filtering irrelevant information at encoding and the impact of filtering distracting information at retrieval simultaneously. In Experiment 2, we tested how ignoring distracting information during maintenance or updating current contents with new information during this period affects recall. The results reveal that manipulating processing requirements induced by retrieval cues (by altering the nature of the retrieval foil) had a significant impact on memory recall: the presence of two previously viewed features from the encoding display in the retrieval foil led to a decrease in identification accuracy. Although irrelevant information can be filtered out well at encoding, both ignoring irrelevant information and updating the contents of memory during the maintenance delay had a detrimental effect on recall. These effects were similar across the lifespan, but older individuals were particularly affected by manipulations of processing demands at encoding as well as increasing set size of information to be retained in memory. Finally, analyses revealed that there were no systematic relationships between filtering performance at encoding, maintenance and retrieval suggesting that these processing demands are independent of each other. Rather than filtering being a single, monolithic entity, the data suggest that it is better accounted for as distinctly dissociable cognitive processes that engage and articulate with different phases of working memory.

Dataset Information

Age-related deficits in selective attention during encoding increase demands on episodic reconstruction during context retrieval: An ERP study.

Publications

Age-related deficits in selective attention during encoding increase demands on episodic reconstruction during context retrieval: An ERP study.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets