The Effects of Ageing on Memory and Thinking
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Date
2007Item status
Restricted AccessAuthor
Ford, Amanda
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Abstract
The main aim of the present study is to examine the effects of ageing on memory and
thinking by examining verbal fluency performance. More specifically looking at the
differences between older and younger people, to ascertain where the disparities lie.
The main unique point of this study is to determine the differences in retrieval times and
the time to switch between clusters of words. A Semantic Fluency task was
administered to N = 63 normal participants. In this task participants were asked to write
as many exemplars of the category “animals” as they could in 2 minutes. The procedure
for the main components of the task was based on the tests cited by Abrahams, Leigh,
Harvey, Vythelingum, Grise and Goldstein (2000). However clustering and switching
was examined using Troyer, Moscovitch, and Winocurs’ (1997) older healthy adult’s
conceptual model.
The results showed a significant difference between the age groups for (1) number of
exemplars generated (2) number of exemplars produced between 30 seconds
timeframes and (3) time to switch between clusters. Older people produced fewer words
than younger people but were the quickest group when it came to switching between
clusters.
In conclusion, this study found comparable results in terms of the total number of words
generated by differing age groups as found in much of the previous literature. But an
opposite age effect, was found for “time to switch” to that found by Troyer et al. (1997).
This new finding points to the fact that although time to switch is an executive measure
it was not affected by ageing in the current study. This may be due to the higher IQ of
the older group, which could suggest that their more proficient verbal ability may have
helped their semantic search for animal exemplars.