Rybash, JM (1996). IMPLICIT MEMORY AND AGING - A COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL
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Keywords: WORD-FRAGMENT COMPLETION, LEARNING SERIAL PATTERNS,
ADULT AGE-DIFFERENCES, ALZHEIMERS-DISEASE, EXPLICIT MEMORY, OLDER ADULTS,
HUNTINGTONS-DISEASE, PARKINSONS-DISEASE, AMNESIC PATIENTS, RECOGNITION
MEMORY
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Abstract
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Although it is well-established that there are age deficits on measures
of explicit memory, there is conflicting evidence as to whether implicit
memory, as measured by performance on various repetition priming tasks,
is impaired by age. In order to clarify the relation between aging and
implicit memory, priming tasks were organized in the following categories:
(a) perceptual-item priming, (b) perceptual-associative priming, (c) conceptual-item
priming, (d) conceptual-associative priming, and (e) perceptual-motor priming.
The taxonomy took into account the type of mental representation that different
priming tasks depend on, the neurological structures responsible for these
representations, the extent to which printing tasks demand the formation
of novel associations, and the various blends of data-driven and conceptually
driven processes that facilitate task performance. A literature review
based on this taxonomy revealed two tentative conclusions. First, the processes
associated with normal aging are likely to impair performance on tasks
of conceptual-item priming and conceptual-associative priming, but do not
have a negative affect on tasks of perceptual-item priming, perceptual-associative
priming, and perceptual-motor priming. Second, this pattern of selective
preservation and impairment is also displayed by patients with Alzheimer's
disease but not amnesia or Huntington's disease. These findings were interpreted
from the perspective of a model of human memory that builds on recent advances
within the domain of cognitive neuropsychology.