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Abstract:
The present study examined age-related differences in
maintaining information about the visual features or spatial
locations of objects in working memory. A battery of six
computerized visuospatial working memory tasks was administered to
69 young adults and 49 older adults. The battery was made up of
three pairs of tasks. For each pair, one task focused on
remembering visual features and the other focused on remembering
spatial locations. The first pair was designed to compare effects
of varying retention interval on memory for a single item of
visuospatial information. The second pair was designed to compare
the effects of retention interval on memory for multiple items. The
last pair was designed to compare effects of varying information
load on working memory. The results showed that increases in the
retention interval affected older and young adults to the same
degree, indicating that over a 2500 ms period visuospatial
information decayed at similar rates in older and young adults. The
results also indicated a greater age deficit when spatial location
information needed to be maintained than when visual feature
information needed to be maintained. Regardless of domain (i.e.,
visual features versus spatial locations), however, an increase in
the amount of information was associated with a greater decrease in
older adults' memory performance.
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