Cross-situational statistical learning in younger and older adults
| Autor: | Federica Bulgarelli, Daniel J. Weiss, Nancy A. Dennis |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
Adult
Male Aging Process (engineering) education Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Article 050105 experimental psychology Task (project management) Association Young Adult 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Humans Cognitive Dysfunction 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Situational ethics Set (psychology) Aged Memory Disorders Statistical learning 05 social sciences Age Factors Middle Aged Content-addressable memory Psychiatry and Mental health Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology Practice Psychological Younger adults Female Tracking (education) Probability Learning Geriatrics and Gerontology Psychology 030217 neurology & neurosurgery Cognitive psychology |
| Zdroj: | Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn |
| ISSN: | 1744-4128 1382-5585 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/13825585.2020.1759502 |
| Popis: | Statistical learning, the process of tracking regularities in the environment, has been systematically investigated across development and in younger adulthood over the past two decades. Research investigating statistical learning abilities in older adults has been more limited, though existing studies suggest there are age-related declines. Here, we aim to further understand older adults’ ability to track statistical regularities using a cross-situational statistical learning paradigm in which learners map novel words to novel objects by tracking associations over time. In Experiment 1, we manipulated task difficulty by increasing the number of competitors and found an overall age deficit but no interaction between age and difficulty, indicating that difficulty similarly impacts older and younger adults. In Experiment 2, we provided extended practice with a first set of object-word mappings before switching to a second learning phase in which learners could remap a subset of previously learned words to novel objects. Based on hyper-binding, we posited that older adults might be more willing to remap previously learned words to novel objects. However, despite overall poorer learning of the primary association, older adults were actually less likely to remap previously learned words to novel objects relative to young adults. Thus, we demonstrate that even though older adults may have an associative memory deficit, learned associations are not more weakly bound for older relative to younger adults. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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