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Abstract:
Abstract: Transfer of conceptual priming effects has been
examined in young normal participants (YN) using a semantic
decision task in which subjects were faster to make "yes/no"
decisions about repeated items compared to new items (Vreizen et
al., 1995). On this task, YN's exhibit conceptual priming when
stimulus format is varied between study and test (transfer across
format), and when the semantic decision is varied between study and
test (transfer across processing task), as long as the decision
tasks tapped information from the same semantic domain. To
investigate the effect of aging on transfer of conceptual priming
effects, the current study measured priming performance across
changes in stimulus format and processing task in elderly subjects
(EN) and YN's. Category exemplar generation performance was also
measured to provide an alternative index of conceptual priming.
EN's showed normal priming effects on the category exemplar
generation task compared to YN's. Results from the semantic
decision task suggest that some aspects of conceptual transfer may
be intact (i.e., transfer across stimulus format) but others may be
disrupted (i.e., transfer across processing task) in normal aging.
This disruption may underlie discrepant findings of conceptual
priming performance in normal aging.
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