The time course of encoding specific and gist episodic memory representations among young and older adults.

How rapidly can we encode the specifics versus the gist of episodic memories? Competing theories have opposing answers, but empirical tests are based primarily on tasks of item memory. Few studies have addressed this question with tasks measuring the binding of event components (e.g., a person and a location), which forms the core of episodic memory. None of these prior studies included older adults, whose episodic memories are less specific in nature. We addressed this critical gap by presenting face-scene pairs (e.g., an old man with a park) at various encoding presentation rates to 80 young (M = 21.83 years) and 86 older (M = 68.62 years) adults. Participants completed associative recognition tests featuring old/intact (e.g., the old man with the same park), similar (e.g., the old man with a different park), and unrelated (e.g., the old man with a kitchen) pairs. Multinomial-processing-tree model analyses revealed that young and older adults encoded each pair's gist representation more rapidly than its specific representation, supporting fuzzy-trace theory. No age-related differences in gist representations were obtained at any presentation rate, but older adults required more time to encode specific representations commensurate with those of younger adults. However, older adults' abilities to retrieve these representations were cue-dependent, as they were more susceptible than younger adults to experiencing vivid false memories of similar lures. These phantom recollections were remediated with further increases in encoding time. Thus, slower speed of encoding partially underlies age-related declines in episodic memory specificity, but retrieval mechanisms also play a role. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

A lifespan study of the confidence-accuracy relation in working memory and episodic long-term memory.

The relation between an individual's memory accuracy and reported confidence in their memories can indicate self-awareness of memory strengths and weaknesses. We provide a lifespan perspective on this confidence-accuracy relation, based on two previously published experiments with 320 participants, including children aged 6-13, young adults aged 18-27, and older adults aged 65-77, across tests of working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM). Participants studied visual items in arrays of varying set sizes and completed item recognition tests featuring 6-point confidence ratings either immediately after studying each array (WM tests) or following a long period of study events (LTM tests). Confidence-accuracy characteristic analyses showed that accuracy improved with increasing confidence for all age groups and in both WM and LTM tests. These findings reflect a universal ability across the lifespan to use awareness of the strengths and limitations of one's memories to adjust reported confidence. Despite this age invariance in the confidence-accuracy relation, however, young children were more prone to high-confidence memory errors than other groups in tests of WM, whereas older adults were more susceptible to high-confidence false alarms in tests of LTM. Thus, although participants of all ages can assess when their memories are weaker or stronger, individuals with generally weaker memories are less adept at this confidence-accuracy calibration. Findings also speak to potential different sources of high-confidence memory errors for young children and older adults, relative to young adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Differential attentional costs of encoding specific and gist episodic memory representations.

Theories of episodic memory posit that more attentional resources are needed for encoding specific compared to gist representations. This position has been challenged by recent findings of similar divided attention (DA) at encoding costs on both specific and gist representations. However, the disrupting effects of DA on specific representations may emerge under less difficult DA conditions than those under which effects on gist representations emerge. The present study addressed this possibility by manipulating the difficulty of a concurrent DA task (low, intermediate, or high difficulty) during encoding among 176 young adult participants, who encoded face-scene pairs under either full attention or one of the three levels of DA. During retrieval, participants discriminated intact pairs from recombined pairs that varied in how similar they were to studied pairs. Results, interpreted using a multinomial-processing-tree model of specific and gist memory, showed that the disrupting effects of DA on specific representations emerged under less difficult attentional loads (intermediate-demanding condition) compared to those under which gist representations were disrupted (high-demanding condition). These findings reinforce the suggestion of differential attentional demands for specific and gist representations and also provide insights into attentional resource theories of adult age-related cognitive decline. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Forgetting of specific and gist visual associative episodic memory representations across time.

Associative binding between components of an episode is vulnerable to forgetting across time. We investigated whether these forgetting effects on inter-item associative memory occur only at specific or also at gist levels of representation. In two experiments, young adult participants (n = 90, and 86, respectively) encoded face-scene pairs and were then tested either immediately after encoding or following a 24-hour delay. Tests featured conjoint recognition judgments, in which participants were tasked with discriminating intact pairs from highly similar foils, less similar foils, and completely dissimilar foils. In both experiments, the 24-hour delay resulted in deficits in specific memory for face-scene pairs, as measured using multinomial-processing-tree analyses. In Experiment 1, gist memory was not affected by the 24-hour delay, but when associative memory was strengthened through pair repetition (Experiment 2), deficits in gist memory following a 24-hour delay were observed. Results suggest that specific representations of associations in episodic memory, and under some conditions gist representations, as well, are susceptible to forgetting across time.

Adult age-related changes in the specificity of episodic memory representations: A review and theoretical framework.

We provide a comprehensive review describing research on the qualitative representational nature of older adults' episodic memories. Our review considers several broad theoretical frameworks and decades of research converging on a universal principle of adult aging: Episodic memory in older adulthood is characterized as being less specific in nature than in younger adulthood. Going beyond earlier specific reviews on related topics in the false memory, neuroscience, and reading comprehension literatures, our review synthesizes findings from these fields with more recent research from the precision literature, along with several new studies on age differences in the specificity of associative aspects of episodic memory, where age deficits have long been reported. We also sketch a new theoretical framework as inspiration for future research that can better elucidate the mechanisms underpinning age differences in the specificity of memory representations, including reduced attentional resources and slower speed of processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The formation of specific and gist associative episodic memory representations during encoding: Effects of rate of presentation.

Assessing the time course under which underlying memory representations can be formed is an important question for understanding memory. Several studies assessing item memory have shown that gist representations of items are laid out more rapidly than verbatim representations. However, for associations among items/components, which form the core of episodic memory, it is unclear whether gist representations form more quickly than, or at least in parallel with, verbatim representations, as fuzzy-trace theory predicts, or whether gist is extracted more slowly from inferring the meaning of verbatim representations, as in gist macroprocessor theories. To test these contrasting possibilities, we used a novel associative recognition task in which participants studied face-scene pairs for .75, 1.5, or 4 seconds each, and were later tested on their ability to discriminate intact pairs from foils which varied in how similar they were to originally studied pairs. Across 2 experiments, we found that verbatim memory for associations, measured using a multinomial-processing-tree model, improved from .75 to 1.5 to 4 seconds of presentation time. Paralleling these effects of encoding time on verbatim memory, for gist memory, there were improvements from .75 seconds to 1.5 seconds in both experiment 1 and 2, while improvements from 1.5 seconds to 4 seconds were only evident when the retention interval between study and test was increased (experiment 2). These results provide strong support for the parallel processing framework of fuzzy-trace theory over the slow gist extraction framework of an alternative gist macroprocessor theory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Strategic adaptation to dual-task in verbal working memory: Potential routes for theory integration.

How working memory supports dual-task performance is the focus of a long-standing debate. Most previous research on this topic has focused on participant performance data. In three experiments, we investigated whether changes in participant-reported strategies across single- and dual-task conditions might help resolve this debate by offering new insights that lead to fruitful integration of theories rather than perpetuating debate by attempting to identify which theory best fits the data. Results indicated that articulatory suppression was associated with reduced reports of the use of rehearsal and clustering strategies but to an increase of the reported use of a visual strategy. Elaboration and clustering strategies were reported less for memory under dual task compared with single task. Under both dual task and articulatory suppression, more participants reported attempting to remember fewer memory items than were presented (memory reduction strategy). For arithmetic verification, articulatory suppression and dual task resulted in a reduction in reports of a counting strategy and an increase in reports of a retrieval strategy for arithmetic knowledge. It is argued that experimenters should not assume that participants perform the same task in the same way under different experimental conditions and that carefulty investigation of how participants change their strategies in response to changes in experimental conditions has considerable potential for resolving theoretical challenges. It is argued further that this approach points toward the value of attempting to integrate rather than proliferate theories of working memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The proportion of working memory items recoverable from long-term memory remains fixed despite adult aging.

We explored whether long-term memory (LTM) retrieval is constrained by working memory (WM) limitations, in 80 younger and 80 older adults. Participants performed a WM task with images of unique everyday items, presented at varying set sizes. Subsequently, we tested participants' LTM for items from the WM task and examined the ratio of LTM/WM retention. While older adults' WM and LTM were generally poorer than that of younger adults, their LTM deficit was no greater than what was predicted from their WM performance. The ability to encode WM information into LTM appeared immune to age-related cognitive decline. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Adult age differences in specific and gist associative episodic memory across short- and long-term retention intervals.

Age-related deficits in associative episodic memory have been widely reported, but recent research suggests that some of these deficits occur for highly specific but not gist representations. It remains undetermined whether older adults' deficits in specific associative episodic memory, observed in long-term memory, are also present in short-term memory. We used a continuous associative recognition task to address this question. Fifty young and 50 older adults studied face-scene pairs, with memory tests occurring in both short-term and long-term memory. Memory tests featured intact (old) pairs, related (similar) pairs, and unrelated (dissimilar) pairs. On short-term memory tests, older adults were less accurate in classifying related pairs, which was manifest by age-related reductions in the probability of retrieving specific memory to engage in recollection rejection. However, older adults were capable of remembering specific details in short-term memory for intact probes but were less likely to remember specific details in long-term memory. Finally, older adults were always as capable as younger adults of remembering gist details. Results suggest that older adults do at least partially encode specific representations in short-term memory, and their access to these specific representations is cue dependent-they can do so when there is a large correspondence between encoding and retrieval conditions but are less likely to engage in deeper elaboration at retrieval. This limits their ability to remember specific details of associations to suppress false recognitions in short-term memory and to engage in veridical recognition in long-term memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Online experimentation and sampling in cognitive aging research.

Online data collection methods have become increasingly popular in many domains of psychology, but their use in cognitive aging studies remains relatively limited. Is it time for cognitive aging researchers to embrace these methods? Here, we weigh potential advantages and disadvantages of conducting online studies with young and older adults, relative to lab-based studies, with a particular focus on the study of human memory and aging. With online studies, it may be possible to assess whether age-related effects on cognition obtained in the laboratory generalize to other situations with different environmental or subject characteristics. However, there are many open questions about the representativeness of older adults on online data collection platforms, and issues surrounding data quality, selection effects, and other biasing characteristics, which must be carefully handled in cognitive aging studies which recruit young and older adult participants online. We consider the benefit of conducting experimentation both in the lab and online in providing converging evidence on a research question, and we offer an example of an experiment on adult age differences in associative recognition that was conducted in the laboratory and online. We also provide practical recommendations for ways to maximize the potential for online studies to contribute to our understanding of cognitive aging. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

"He was the one with the gun!" Associative memory for white and black faces seen with weapons.

Much research has found that implicit associations between Black male faces and aggression affect dispositional judgments and decision-making, but there have been few investigations into downstream effects on explicit episodic memory. The current experiment tested whether such implicit associations interact with explicit recognition memory using an associative memory paradigm in younger and older adults. Participants studied image pairs featuring faces (of Black or White males) alongside handheld objects (uncategorized, kitchenware, or weapons) and later were tested on their recognition memory for faces, objects, and face/object pairings. Younger adults were further divided into full and divided attention encoding groups. All participants then took the race faces implicit association test. Memory for image pairs was poorer than memory for individual face or object images, particularly among older adults, extending the empirical support for the age-related associative memory deficit hypothesis (Naveh-Benjamin in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cognit 26:1170-1187, 2000) to associations between racial faces and objects. Our primary hypothesis-that older adults' associative memory deficit would be reduced under Black/weapon pairings due to their being schematically related stimuli-was not confirmed. Younger adults and especially older ones, who were predominantly White, exhibited an own-race recognition bias. In addition, older adults showed more negative implicit bias toward Black faces. Importantly, mixed linear analyses revealed that negative implicit associations for Black faces predicted increased explicit associative memory false alarm rates among older adults. Such a pattern may have implications for the criminal justice system, particularly when weighting eyewitness testimony from older adults.

The effects of divided attention at encoding on specific and gist-based associative episodic memory.

Effects of divided attention (DA) during encoding on later memory performance are widely documented. However, the precise nature of these effects on underlying memory representations and subsequent retrieval processes has not been thoroughly investigated. Here, we examined whether DA at encoding would disrupt young adults' ability to remember associations in episodic memory at highly specific levels of representation (i.e., verbatim memory), or whether the effects of DA extend also to gist memory for associations. Two groups of participants (one under full attention, one under DA) studied face-scene pairs. The DA group simultaneously completed an auditory choice reaction-time task during encoding. Following either a short or long delay, participants were tested on their ability to discriminate intact face-scene pairs from recombined pairs that were either highly similar, less similar, or completely unrelated to originally studied pairs. The DA group performed more poorly than the full attention participants at correctly classifying most types of test pairs at both delays, and results from a multinomial-processing-tree model demonstrated that participants who encoded associations under DA experienced deficits in both specific and gist memory retrieval. We also compared the DA group to full attention older adults who were tested with the same paradigm (Greene & Naveh-Benjamin, Psychological Science, 31[3], 316-331, 2020). The DA group had lower estimates of gist retrieval than the older adults but similar estimates of verbatim memory. These results suggest that DA at encoding disrupts episodic memories at multiple levels of representation, in contrast to age-related effects, which are restricted only to the highest levels of specificity.

Levels of specificity in episodic memory: Insights from response accuracy and subjective confidence ratings in older adults and in younger adults under full or divided attention.

We propose that the specificity with which associations in episodic memory can be remembered varies on a continuum. Older adults have been shown to forget highly specific information (Greene & Naveh-Benjamin, 2020b), and in Experiment 1, we provide further evidence that older adults' deficits in associative memory scale with the amount of specificity that needs to be retrieved. In Experiment 2, we address whether depleted attentional resources, simulated in young adults under divided attention at encoding, could account for older adults' associative memory specificity deficits. Participants studied face-scene pairs and later completed an associative recognition test, with test pairs that were old, highly similar or less similar to old pairs, or completely dissimilar. Participants rated their confidence in their decisions. False positive recognition responses increased with the amount of specificity needed to be retrieved. Whereas older adults' associative memory deficits scaled with how much specific information needed to be remembered, younger adults under divided attention had a more general deficit in associative memory. Confidence-accuracy analysis showed that participants were best able to calibrate their confidence when less specific information was needed to perform well. While divided attention young adults were generally prone to high-confidence errors, older adults' high-confidence errors were most apparent when highly specific information needed to be remembered. These results provide further evidence for levels of specificity in episodic memory. Access to the most specific levels is most vulnerable to forgetting, in line with a specificity principle of memory (Surprenant & Neath, 2009). Further, depleted attentional resources at encoding cannot entirely explain older adults' associative memory specificity deficits. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The effects of divided attention at encoding and at retrieval on multidimensional source memory.

Dividing attention (DA) between a memory task and a secondary task results in deficits in memory performance across a wide array of memory tasks, but these effects are larger when DA occurs at encoding than at retrieval. Although some research suggests the effects of DA are equal for item and associative memory, thereby suggesting that DA disrupts all components of an episode to the same extent, there have been relatively few studies directly examining the effects of DA on multiple features of the same episode. In addition, no studies have examined how DA may affect the stochastic dependency between multiple source dimensions of a given episode, which is central to theories of source memory, and episodic memory in general. Thus, in two experiments, we used a multidimensional source memory task-examining memory for items and multiple source features-and separately investigated how DA at encoding or at retrieval affects item memory, source memory, and joint source retrieval. DA was manipulated at encoding in Experiment 1 and at retrieval in Experiment 2. Whereas DA at encoding disrupted item memory, as well as source memory and source-source binding, though to a lesser extent, DA at retrieval did not affect any of these outcomes. Results are discussed in terms of levels of binding and the role of attention in encoding and retrieval of bounded episodic representations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Exploring the influence of temporal factors on age differences in working memory dual task costs.

Working memory is defined by many as the system that allows us to simultaneously store information over brief time periods while engaging in other information processing activities. In a previous study (Rhodes, Jaroslawska et al. (2019) Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148, 1204-1227.) we found that retention of serially presented letters was disrupted by the introduction of an arithmetic processing task during a 10 second delay period. Importantly, the magnitude of this dual task disruption increased with age from 18 to 81. The demands of each task were adjusted prior to dual task so that age differences did not reflect baseline differences in single task performance. Motivated by these findings, theories of working memory, and additional analyses of processing reaction times from this previous experiment, we report two experiments, using the same tasks and adjustment procedure, attempting to modulate the magnitude of age differences in dual task effects via manipulations focused on time for encoding to-be-remembered material. Providing a delay prior to processing activities, to facilitate switching between the two tasks, did not modulate age differences. Neither did separating the to-be-remembered material temporally, to allow for the creation of more distinct representations. These findings provide two replications of our initial finding and suggest that age differences in working memory dual tasking are not due to limitations in the speed of encoding. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Revisiting the remember-know task: Replications of Gardiner and Java (1990).

One of the most evidential behavioral results for two memory processes comes from Gardiner and Java (Memory & Cognition, 18, 23-30 1990). Participants provided more "remember" than "know" responses for old words but more know than remember responses for old nonwords. Moreover, there was no effect of word/nonword status for new items. The combination of a crossover interaction for old items with an invariance for new items provides strong evidence for two distinct processes while ruling out criteria or bias explanations. Here, we report a modern replication of this study. In three experiments, (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) with larger numbers of items and participants, we were unable to replicate the crossover. Instead, our data are more consistent with a single-process account. In a fourth experiment (Experiment 3), we were able to replicate Gardiner and Java's baseline results with a sure-unsure paradigm supporting a single-process explanation. It seems that Gardiner and Java's remarkable crossover result is not replicable.

Longer resistance of associative versus item memory to interference-based forgetting, even in older adults.

Few studies have compared interference-based forgetting between item versus associative memory. The memory-system dependent forgetting hypothesis (Hardt, Nader, & Nadel, 2013) predicts that effects of interference on associative memory should be minimal because its hippocampal representation allows pattern separation even of highly similar information. In contrast, there should be strong interference effects on extra-hippocampally represented item memory. We tested this prediction in behavioral data from 3 experiments using continuous recognition paradigms. Given older adults' greater deficits in associative than item memory, we also compared younger and older adults to test whether this associative deficit extends to greater interference susceptibility in older adults' associative memory. Experiment 1 examined item-item associative memory with participants studying unrelated word pairs continuously intermixed with item (single words) and associative (intact vs. recombined pairs) recognition tests across interference-filled lags. Experiments 2 and 3 examined item-context (i.e., source) associative memory with participants studying words in different spatial positions continuously intermixed with source-monitoring tests (presented on top vs. on bottom vs. new?) across interference-filled lags (Experiment 3 controlling for delay/decay-based effects). In all experiments, item memory declined from the first lag on. In contrast, associative memory initially remained stable, with strong evidence for null effects of interference even in older adults, but showed some declines at later lags. The data supports Hardt et al.'s proposal of differential interference-based forgetting in item versus associative memory. The results further show that the age-related associative memory deficit does not extend to greater interference-based forgetting in older adults' associative memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Age differences in the precision of memory at short and long delays.

Age differences are well established for many memory tasks assessing both short-term and long-term memory. However, how age differences in performance vary with increasing delay between study and test is less clear. Here, we report two experiments in which participants studied a continuous sequence of object-location pairings. Test events were intermixed such that participants were asked to recall the precise location of an object following a variable delay. Older adults exhibit a greater degree of error (distance between studied and recalled locations) relative to younger adults at short (0-2 intervening events) and longer delays (10-25 intervening events). Mixture modeling of the distribution of recall error suggests that older adults do not fail to recall information at a significantly higher rate than younger adults. Instead, what they do recall appears to be less precise. Follow-up analyses demonstrated that this age difference emerges following only one or two intervening events between study and test. These findings are consistent with the suggestion that aging does not greatly impair recall from the focus of attention but that age differences emerge once information is displaced from this highly accessible state. Further, we suggest that age differences in the precision of memory, but not the probability of successful recall, may be due to the use of more gist-like representations in this task. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

How Do Scientific Views Change? Notes From an Extended Adversarial Collaboration.

There are few examples of an extended adversarial collaboration, in which investigators committed to different theoretical views collaborate to test opposing predictions. Whereas previous adversarial collaborations have produced single research articles, here, we share our experience in programmatic, extended adversarial collaboration involving three laboratories in different countries with different theoretical views regarding working memory, the limited information retained in mind, serving ongoing thought and action. We have focused on short-term memory retention of items (letters) during a distracting task (arithmetic), and effects of aging on these tasks. Over several years, we have conducted and published joint research with preregistered predictions, methods, and analysis plans, with replication of each study across two laboratories concurrently. We argue that, although an adversarial collaboration will not usually induce senior researchers to abandon favored theoretical views and adopt opposing views, it will necessitate varieties of their views that are more similar to one another, in that they must account for a growing, common corpus of evidence. This approach promotes understanding of others' views and presents to the field research findings accepted as valid by researchers with opposing interpretations. We illustrate this process with our own research experiences and make recommendations applicable to diverse scientific areas.

Adult age differences in working memory capacity: Spared central storage but deficits in ability to maximize peripheral storage.

For the first time, we quantify capacities of working memory in young and older adults in a dual-task situation, addressing whether older adults have diminished central or peripheral capacity in working memory. Across 2 experiments, 63 young and 63 old adult participants studied visual arrays of colored squares and sequences of unfamiliar tones in quick succession and were instructed to attend to one or both modalities. Memory was assessed with a single-probe change-detection task. We used a recently developed capacity-estimate model to partition participants' overall working memory capacity into 3 components: a peripheral component dedicated to visual information regardless of attention instruction; a peripheral component similarly dedicated to auditory information; and a central component allocated to either modality, or shared between both, depending on attention instruction. Capacity estimates of the peripheral components were consistently smaller in the older adults than in the young adults, but the central component was stable across both age groups. We contend that older adults are impaired in their ability to strategically encode information in ways that younger adults use to increase peripheral storage, a kind of storage that is immune to loss through bimodal attention costs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).