title: Effects of Age on Long Term Memory for Degraded Speech.
abstract: Prior research suggests that acoustical degradation impacts encoding of items into memory, especially in elderly subjects. We here aimed to investigate whether acoustically degraded items that are initially encoded into memory are more prone to forgetting as a function of age. Young and old participants were tested with a vocoded and unvocoded serial list learning task involving immediate and delayed free recall. We found that degraded auditory input increased forgetting of previously encoded items, especially in older participants. We further found that working memory capacity predicted forgetting of degraded information in young participants. In old participants, verbal IQ was the most important predictor for forgetting acoustically degraded information. Our data provide evidence that acoustically degraded information, even if encoded, is especially vulnerable to forgetting in old age.
authors.affiliation: Biological Psychology Lab, Cluster of Excellence "Hearing4all", Department of Psychology, European Medical School, Carl von Ossietzky Universität OldenburgOldenburg, Germany; Research Center Neurosensory Science, Carl von Ossietzky Universität OldenburgOldenburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Christiane M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Thiel
authors.affiliation: Biological Psychology Lab, Cluster of Excellence "Hearing4all", Department of Psychology, European Medical School, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg Oldenburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Jale
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Özyurt
authors.affiliation: Cluster of Excellence "Hearing4all", Department of Otolaryngology, Medical University Hannover Hannover, Germany.
authors.forename: Waldo
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Nogueira
authors.affiliation: Biological Psychology Lab, Cluster of Excellence "Hearing4all", Department of Psychology, European Medical School, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg Oldenburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Puschmann
keywords: age; long term memory; verbal IQ; vocoded speech; working memory