Antimnemonic effects of schemas in young and older adults

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Badham, S.P. ORCID: 0000-0002-6890-102X and Maylor, E.A., 2015. Antimnemonic effects of schemas in young and older adults. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition. ISSN 1382-5585

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13825585.2015.1048774

Abstract

Schema-consistent material that is aligned with an individual’s knowledge and experience is typically more memorable than abstract material. This effect is often more extreme in older adults and schema use can alleviate age deficits in memory. In three experiments, young and older adults completed memory tasks where the availability of schematic information was manipulated. Specifying nonobvious relations between to-be-remembered word pairs paradoxically hindered memory (Experiment 1). Highlighting relations within mixed lists of related and unrelated word pairs had no effect on memory for those pairs (Experiment 2). This occurred even though related word pairs were recalled better than unrelated word pairs, particularly for older adults. Revealing a schematic context in a memory task with abstract image segments also hindered memory performance, particularly for older adults (Experiment 3). The data show that processing schematic information can come with costs that offset mnemonic benefits associated with schema-consistent stimuli.

Item Type:

Journal article

Publication Title:

Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition

Creators:

Badham, S.P. and Maylor, E.A.

Publisher:

Routledge

Place of Publication:

Abingdon

Date:

2015