title: Electrophysiological evidence for the effects of unitization on associative recognition memory in older adults.
abstract: Normal aging is associated with greater decline in associative memory relative to item memory due to impaired recollection. Familiarity may also contribute to associative recognition when stimuli are perceived as a 'unitized' representation. Given that familiarity is relatively preserved in older adults, we explored whether age-related associative memory deficits could be attenuated when associations were unitized (i.e., compounds) compared with those non-unitized (i.e., unrelated word pairs). Young and older adults performed an associative recognition task while electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. Behavioral results showed that age differences were smaller for recognition of compounds than for unrelated word pairs. ERP results indicated that only compounds evoked an early frontal old/new effect in older adults. Moreover, the early frontal old/new effect was positively correlated with associative discrimination accuracy. These findings suggest that reduced age-related associative deficits under unitized condition may be associated with the presence of familiarity-based retrieval of compounds in older adults.
authors: Center on Aging Psychology, Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors: Zhiwei
authors: Z
authors: Zheng
authors: Center on Aging Psychology, Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Center, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China. Electronic address: lijuan@psych.ac.cn.
authors: Juan
authors: J
authors: Li
authors: Institute of Developmental Psychology, School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors: Fengqiu
authors: F
authors: Xiao
authors: Department of Behavioral Science, University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, KY, USA.
authors: Lucas S
authors: LS
authors: Broster
authors: Department of Behavioral Science, University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, KY, USA.
authors: Yang
authors: Y
authors: Jiang
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D014936:Word Association Tests; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Aging; Associative recognition; Event-related potentials; Familiarity; Unitization