BY MAYUMY HAMADA
Parkin and Walter (1992) examined the nature of verbal recognition memory in young and old subjects. Following presentation of a word list, subjects undertook a yes-no recognition test and indicated whether their decision was based on explicit recollection or assessment of familiarity. Mean age of elderly is 80 years old and the young are 33.9 years old. Subjects were given NART FSIQ (read a list of irregularly spelled words and measure the error rates), Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (discovers three different rules for sorting multidimensional stimuli, measure the error), FAS Verbal Fluency Test (subjects were asked to remember words list, after delay, subjects were asked to place a letter R or K against words recognized. R words were words that had involved a particular association when learning. K words are words that recognized but not evoked any specific recollection when seen on the card). Comparison of young and old indicated significantly poorer performance by the old on all measures. The results showed that there was a small but significant decrease in recognition accuracy as a function of age. Young subjects produced more R responses than K responses. Elderly subjects made significantly more K responses than R responses. There are significant impairments in old group;confirming aging is associated with greater explicit recollection of the original learning episode, older subjects exhibited far less explicit recollection. Explicit recollection declined with age, and familiarity-based recognition increased. The extent to which older subjects relied on familiarity-based recognition correlated with neuropsychological indices of frontal lobe dysfunction. The data indicate the central role of frontal dysfunction in understanding age-related memory loss.
REFERENCE
Parkin, A. J., & Walter, B. M. (1992). Recollective experience, normal aging, and frontal dysfunction. Psychology & Aging, 7, 2910-298.