[Cognitive aging mechanism of signaling effects on the memory for procedural sentences].
The aim of this study was to clarify the cognitive aging mechanism of signaling effects on the memory for procedural sentences. Participants were 60 younger adults (college students) and 60 older adults. Both age groups were assigned into two groups; half of each group was presented with procedural sentences with signals that highlighted their top-level structure and the other half with procedural sentences without them. Both groups were requested to perform the sentence arrangement task and the reconstruction task. Each task was composed of procedural sentences with or without signals. Results indicated that signaling supported changes in strategy utilization during the successive organizational processes and that changes in strategy utilization resulting from signaling improved the memory for procedural sentences. Moreover, age-related factors interfered with these signaling effects. This study clarified the cognitive aging mechanism of signaling effects in which signaling supports changes in the strategy utilization during organizational processes at encoding and this mediation promotes memory for procedural sentences, though disuse of the strategy utilization due to aging restrains their memory for procedural sentences.
Yamamoto
Hiroki
H
Faculty of Distribution and Communication, Osaka Gakuin University, Suita, Japan. yamamoto@utc.osaka-gu.ac.jp
Shimada
Hideaki
H
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory