Age factors

This study aimed to understand the differences in strength or coordination of brain regions involved in processing faces in the presence of aging and/or progressing neuropathology (Alzheimer's disease). To this end, Experiment 1 evaluated age-related differences in basic face processing and the effects of familiarity in face processing. Overall, face processing in younger (22-35yrs) and older participants (63-83yrs) recruited a broadly distributed network of brain activity, but the distribution of activity varied depending on the age of the individual. The younger population utilized regions of the occipitotemporal, medial frontal and posterior parietal cortices while the older population recruited a concentrated occipitotemporal network. The younger participants were also sensitive to the type of face presented, as Novel faces were associated with greater mean BOLD activity than either the Famous or Relatives faces. Interestingly, Relatives faces were associated with greater mean B OLD activity in more regions of the brain than found in any other analysis in Exp. 1, spanning the inferior frontal, medial temporal and inferior parietal cortices. In contrast, the older adults were not sensitive to the type of face presented, which could reflect a difference in cognitive strategies used by the older population when presented with this type of face stimuli. Experiment 2 evaluated face processing, familiarity in face processing and also emphasized the interactive roles autobiographical processing and memory recency play in processing familiar faces in mature adults (MA; 45-55yrs), older adults (OA; 70-92yrs) and patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease (AD; 70-92yrs).

Healthy aging has been associated with declines in executive functioning (EF) but it remains unclear how different subprocesses of EF are affected by age and by other possibly mediating variables. The principal aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of age and processing speed on three executive functions: set-shifting, planning, and attentional control. Four age groups (20-29 years, 60-69 years, 70-79 years, and 80-89 years) were compared on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), the DKEFS Tower Test, the Conner's Continuous Performance Test, and a Letter comparison test of processing speed. Results suggested that increased age was associated with decreased performance on most of the studied executive measures, but not all EF are equally affected by age. A slowdown in processing speed mediates some, but not all, decrements in executive performance. The results are interpreted in light of recent neuroimaging data on age-related changes in brain functioning.

This study provides evidence for an age bias in face recognition. Younger adults viewed short video clips of young actors or of actors over the age of 60 performing everyday actions. One week later, participants were tested on their memory for these events. Recognition event types included same, completely new, and conjunction items. In conjunction items, a familiar actor performed a familiar action that had actually been performed by someone else during encoding. Participants performed well at picking out the new and old events, but had more difficulty distinguishing between the conjunction events. Younger adults were significantly worse at recognizing the conjunction items when the age of the actor was different from encoding to retrieval. This study supports the hypothesis that people are better able to recognize and distinguish others within a similar age range compared to people outside that range.

Event memory studies have shown that older adults typically have poorer memories for events than do younger adults. Unfortunately, these studies tested memory for events that contained only young adults as the actors. It could be that the younger adults remembered the events better due to an own-age bias. One particular type of event memory error is called unconscious transference. In unconscious transference, a binding error results in false conjunction memories. Several studies have shown that older adults are more likely to make these errors. This study aims to look more closely at the effects of own-age bias on face recognition and conjunction errors made in memory for events. Younger adults were tested on their memory for both younger and older adults seen performing simple actions in video clips as well as in "mug shot" photograph tests.

Two separate groups of young and middle-aged adults watched videos of events being performed by a number of different college-aged females. Both the young goup of adults and the middle-aged group of adults were later tested on their memory for both the individual features of these events (i.e., actors and actions), and for conjunctions of features (i.e., which actor performed which action) in order to determine how likely they were to remember which actors performed which actions. Our results showed that frontal lobe functioning is not affected with age. However, there is a slight decrease in medial temporal functioning that continues on throughout life. There was a main effect of Question, Item Type, and Age Group explained through a three-way ANOVA. Binding errors increase with age because specific areas of the brain, such as the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, deteriorate with age.

This experiment tested 3 to 5-year-old children's (n=18) abilities to learn a novel verb in the context of one or two novel objects. We showed the children claymation videos of novel creatures performing two novel actions. They were then tested on whether they could correctly identify the action that a creature was performing in the form of a 'yes' or 'no' response. Children in the blocked condition, who learned the verbs in the context of one creature, responded correctly more often (p=.01) than children in the grouped condition, who learned the verbs in the context of two creatures. Results were similar when tested again one week later. These findings suggest that when teaching young children verbs, it may be more effective to first teach in the context of one object so that the children have a more confident understanding of the verb meaning.

This study provides evidence for an age bias in face recognition. Younger adults viewed short video clips of young actors or of actors over the age of 60 performing everyday actions. One week later, participants were tested on their memory for these events. Recognition event types included same, completely new, and conjunction items. In conjunction items, a familiar actor performed a familiar action that had actually been performed by someone else during encoding. Participants performed well at picking out the new and old events, but had more difficulty distinguishing between the conjunction events. Younger adults were significantly worse at recognizing the conjunction items when the age of the actor was different from encoding to retrieval. This study supports the hypothesis that people are better able to recognize and distinguish others within a similar age range compared to people outside that range.