Memory and aging: components and processes.
This article provides a critical review of memory and aging. The focus is on the more accepted ternary scheme of memory, i.e. procedural, semantic and episodic, and on processing resources. A review of the literature in these areas, considering the more relevant studies or those with a greater number of subjects, reveals a gradual decrease of performance with age. No single hypothesis, either psychological or physiological, seems to be capable of explaining this decline. However, the hypothesis of a cognitive slowing during aging has an appealing simplicity and offers the chance to integrate the myriad of task-specific explanations that have proliferated in the literature.
Salmaso
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Institute of Psychology, National Research Council, Rome, Italy.
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over / Q000523:psychology; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D011930:Reaction Time; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D014706:Verbal Learning