title: Working memory for item and temporal information in younger and older adults.
abstract: Two experiments examined age differences in mechanisms hypothesized to affect activation of item and temporal information in working memory. Activation levels were inferred from the ability to reject n-back lures matching items in different temporal positions. Information with the least decay had a performance advantage over less recent information, but was susceptible to the same temporal context errors found in all adjacent-to-target lure positions. Lures most distant from the current item showed a performance rebound. The pattern of increased magnitudes of age effects at adjacent-to-target positions indicated a reduction in older adults' working memory for temporal context information above and beyond item memory declines. Results overall support the emphasis on context information as a critical factor in working memory and cognitive aging.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Marietta College, 215 Fifth Street, Marietta, OH, USA.
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: McCabe
authors.forename: Marilyn
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hartman
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D005364:Field Dependence-Independence; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012691:Serial Learning