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The influence of long-term memory on working memory: Age-differences in proactive facilitation and interference.

ABSTRACT: Prior learning can hinder subsequent memory, especially when there is conflict between old and new information. The ability to handle this proactive interference is an important source of differences in memory performance between younger and older adults. In younger participants, Oberauer et al. (2017, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43[1], 1) report evidence of proactive facilitation from previously learned information in a working memory task in the absence of proactive interference between long-term and working memory. In the present work, we examine the generality of these findings to different stimulus materials and to older adults. Participants first learned image-word associations and then completed an image-word working memory task. Some pairs were the same as those initially learned, for which we expected facilitation relative to previously unencountered pairs. Other pairs were made up of previously learned elements in different combinations, for which we might expect interference. Younger and older participants showed similar levels of facilitation from previously learned associations relative to new pairs. In addition, older participants exhibited proactive interference from long-term to working memory, whereas younger participants exhibited facilitation, even for pairings that conflicted with those learned earlier in the experiment. These findings confirm older adults' greater susceptibility to proactive interference and we discuss the theoretical implications of younger adults' apparent immunity to interference.

SUBMITTER: Rhodes S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8318553 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:The lateral prefrontal cortex is known for its contribution to working memory (WM) processes in both humans and animals. Yet, recent studies indicate that the prefrontal cortex is part of a broader network of interconnected brain areas involved in WM. Within the medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures, the perirhinal cortex, which has extensive direct interactions with the lateral and orbital prefrontal cortex, is required to form active/flexible representations of familiar objects. However, its participation in WM processes has not be fully explored. The goal of this study was to assess the effects of neonatal perirhinal lesions on maintenance and monitoring WM processes. As adults, animals with neonatal perirhinal lesions and their matched controls were tested in three object-based (non-spatial) WM tasks that tapped different WM processing domains, e.g., maintenance only (Session-unique Delayed-nonmatching-to Sample, SU-DNMS), and maintenance and monitoring (Object-Self-Order, OBJ-SO; Serial Order Memory Task, SOMT). Neonatal perirhinal lesions transiently impaired the acquisition of SU-DNMS at a short (5 s) delay, but not when re-tested with a longer delay (30 s). The same neonatal lesions severely impacted acquisition of OBJ-SO task, and the impairment was characterized by a sharp increase in perseverative errors. By contrast, neonatal perirhinal lesion spared the ability to monitor the temporal order of items in WM as measured by the SOMT. Contrary to the SU-DNMS and OBJ-SO, which re-use the same stimuli across trials and thus produce proactive interference, the SOMT uses novel objects on each trial and is devoid of interference. Therefore, the impairment of monkeys with neonatal perirhinal lesions on SU-DNMS and OBJ-SO tasks is likely to be caused by an inability to solve working memory tasks with high proactive interference. The sparing of performance on the SOMT demonstrates that neonatal perirhinal lesions do not alter working memory processes per se but rather impact processes modulating impulse control and/or behavioral flexibility.

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The influence of long-term memory on working memory: Age-differences in proactive facilitation and interference.

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