Cognition--Age factors

Educational level affects various neuropsychological measures including
performance on verbal fluency tasks. It is still unclear how this effect may differ across
the different types of fluency tasks (i.e. animals,fruits, vegetables and clothing) and
across American ethnic groups (Hispanics, Europeans, Africans, and African Carib beans)
using different languages (English and Spanish). Using a sample of 140 normal elder
Americans (ages 57 to 88; 38M/ 102F) divided into two education groups (7-11 and> 12
years of education), results showed strong association with performance for education on
the categories fruits and clothing and for ethnicity on the total items generated and
number of switches for vegetables. Differences between Spanish and English speakers
were found for the fruits category. Results suggest that the animal category is the best one to be used to reduce potential effects of education in individuals with more than 7
years of education.

In the current experiment, a group of 10-year-olds and a group of young adults
watched a series of short video clips of different women performing different actions.
One week later, participants were tested on their ability to discriminate the old videos
from distracter videos, which included new actor/old action videos, new action/old actor
videos, novel combinations of familiar actors and actions, as well as entirely new videos.
The results provide evidence that the ability to accurately bind actors with their actions
reaches adult levels by age 10. The results are discussed in terms of the brain areas
involved in memory binding tasks, as well as implications for various areas of study
within forensic psychology, particularly unconscious transference.

Facial recognition memory is a specialized system in the human brain, with an effect of familiarity playing a role in the brain activations involved. Previous studies examining the familiar face processing system have used college-aged subjects. However, memory disorders, like those associated with Alzheimer's disease, typically affect adults over sixty. In an attempt to reveal possible differences between young and older adults', two different age groups were subjected to fMRI analysis while viewing face images with varying familiarity (family, famous and novel). The result showed a significant difference in activations for various cortical areas including the precuneus, cingulate cortex, and fusiform gyrus. Among the differences, an overall trend of greater activation in the left hemisphere for younger subjects compared to the older group was revealed. The results have implications for the study of memory disorders afflicting older adults, like Alzheimer's disease.