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AGING AND CONTEXT EFFECTS IN WORKING MEMORY: AN EVENT-RELATED POTENTIAL INVESTIGATION

Houston, James R
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2148-4302
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1470236660

Abstract Details

2016, Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, Psychology-Adult Development and Aging.
It is well-accepted that higher level cognitive abilities exhibit the greatest declines with the aging process. One aspect of executive function, working memory, is no exception to this trend. Older adults demonstrate clear deficits in working memory function which coincide with different patterns of neural activation compared to younger adults. The reliability of these effects and the strong relationship between age-related working memory losses and losses in other areas of cognitive function have led researchers to propose working memory function as a driving factor behind the majority of age-related losses in cognitive function. However, by treating working memory as a core factor behind cognitive losses with aging, it diminishes the conceptualization of working memory as a highly complex concept in itself. Indeed, as researchers have proposed multiple working memory theories from cognitive, neural, and computational perspectives in an effort to unify and understand the structure and function of the system, pointing to working memory as an explanatory factor behind age-related losses in cognitive performance provides nominal value. In contrast, by examining the working memory system using a process approach that breaks down the component subprocesses of the working memory system, we can gain a better understanding of how and why the complex concept of working memory has such strong associations with age-related losses in cognitive function. The principal goal of this doctoral thesis was to examine the role played by one such subcomponent of the working memory process, context integration, in age-related differences in working memory performance. A multiple experiment study examined how younger and older adults integrated contextual information in a working memory task by manipulating the predictability of source information in a repetition detection working memory paradigm. Behavioral (accuracy and response time) and neurophysiological (EEG) measures were taken while participants engaged in two tasks to address potential age group differences in working memory encoding, retrieval, and context integration. Critically, this study was also one of the first to contrast the working memory theories of aging by using behavioral and direct physiological measures of functioning. Results from both experiments identified age-related losses in accuracy in the single-context control condition. These effects were replicated in the dual context conditions in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2. Results were interpreted as reflecting an age-related reduction in resource reserves that led to losses when the older adults’ comparatively lower resource capacities were exceeded by task demands. ERP analyses suggested that these effects were associated with working memory access deficits with aging. Younger and older adult waveforms also differed in their spatial distributions across the scalp. While younger adults elicited more focal, posterior activities, older adults exhibited more widespread, and frontal activations. Context predictability did not influence the performance of either age group. We conclude that resource consumption is the most likely candidate to drive age group differences in working memory performance and that this difference is the result of age-related deficits in accessing offline working memory stores.
Philip Allen, Ph.D. (Advisor)
166 p.
Psychology
Aging, cognition, memory, cognitive aging, working memory, electroencephalography, EEG, event-related potential, ERP, P3, attention, encoding, retrieval, recognition

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Houston, J. R. (2016). AGING AND CONTEXT EFFECTS IN WORKING MEMORY: AN EVENT-RELATED POTENTIAL INVESTIGATION [Doctoral dissertation, University of Akron]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1470236660

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Houston, James. AGING AND CONTEXT EFFECTS IN WORKING MEMORY: AN EVENT-RELATED POTENTIAL INVESTIGATION . 2016. University of Akron, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1470236660.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Houston, James. "AGING AND CONTEXT EFFECTS IN WORKING MEMORY: AN EVENT-RELATED POTENTIAL INVESTIGATION ." Doctoral dissertation, University of Akron, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1470236660

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

akron1470236660
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© 2016, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License AGING AND CONTEXT EFFECTS IN WORKING MEMORY: AN EVENT-RELATED POTENTIAL INVESTIGATION by James R Houston is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by University of Akron and OhioLINK.