Deficits in category learning in older adults: Rule-based versus clustering accounts.
Memory research has long been one of the key areas of investigation for cognitive aging researchers but only in the last decade or so has categorization been used to understand age differences in cognition. Categorization tasks focus more heavily on the grouping and organization of items in memory,...
| Publicado en: | Psychology & Aging Vol. 32; no. 5; pp. 473 - 489 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | journal article |
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American Psychological Association
Aug2017
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=125047086&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 125047086 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 08827974 PYG jtl: Psychology & Aging issn: 08827974 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Aug2017 vid: 32 iid: 5 pid: 34 pub: American Psychological Association artinfo: ui: 125047086 10.1037/pag0000183 ppf: 473 ppct: 16 formats: tig: atl: Deficits in category learning in older adults: Rule-based versus clustering accounts. aug: au: Badham, Stephen P. Sanborn, Adam N. Maylor, Elizabeth A. affil: Department of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, United Kingdom su: Psychological aspects of aging Aging Cognition Computer simulation Intelligence tests Learning Memory Mathematical models of psychology Research evaluation Research funding sug: subj: Psychological aspects of aging Aging Cognition Computer simulation Intelligence tests Learning Memory Mathematical models of psychology Research evaluation Research funding ab: Memory research has long been one of the key areas of investigation for cognitive aging researchers but only in the last decade or so has categorization been used to understand age differences in cognition. Categorization tasks focus more heavily on the grouping and organization of items in memory, and often on the process of learning relationships through trial and error. Categorization studies allow researchers to more accurately characterize age differences in cognition: whether older adults show declines in the way in which they represent categories with simple rules or declines in representing categories by similarity to past examples. In the current study, young and older adults participated in a set of classic category learning problems, which allowed us to distinguish between three hypotheses: (a) rule-complexity: categories were represented exclusively with rules and older adults had differential difficulty when more complex rules were required, (b) rule-specific: categories could be represented either by rules or by similarity, and there were age deficits in using rules, and (c) clustering: similarity was mainly used and older adults constructed a less-detailed representation by lumping more items into fewer clusters. The ordinal levels of performance across different conditions argued against rule-complexity, as older adults showed greater deficits on less complex categories. The data also provided evidence against rule-specificity, as single-dimensional rules could not explain age declines. Instead, computational modeling of the data indicated that older adults utilized fewer conceptual clusters of items in memory than did young adults. (PsycINFO Database Record pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: journal article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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