title: The effects of aging on the recognition of different types of associations.
abstract: The present study examined how aging influences item and associative recognition memory, and compared memory for two types of associations: associations between the same kinds of information and associations between different kinds of information. A group of young adults and a group of older adults performed a forced-choice face recognition task and two multitrial forced-choice associative recognition tasks, assessing memory for face-face and face-spatial location associations. The results showed disproportionate age-related decline of associative recognition compared to intact item recognition. Moreover, aging affected both types of associative tasks in the same way. The findings support an associative deficit hypothesis (Naveh-Benjamin, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 26, 1170-1187, 2000), which attributes a substantial part of the age effect on episodic memory tasks to difficulty with binding individual components into a cohesive memory trace. This associative deficit seems to affect same-information associations, as well as different-information associations.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Psychopathology Unit, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium. Bastin@ulg.ac.be
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bastin
authors.forename: Martial
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Van der Linden
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001244:Association; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*