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Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment
Published on: June 25, 2019
Priming effects from young-old to very old age on a word-stem completion task: minimizing explicit contamination
Pauline E J Spaan1, Jeroen G W Raaijmakers
1Department of Psychonomics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. P.E.J.Spaan@uva.nl
Summary
Repetition priming effects remain consistent across older adults using a new Word-Stem Completion task. This finding suggests age-invariant priming, aiding in cognitive assessment and differentiation of conditions like Alzheimer's disease.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Gerontology
Background:
- Repetition priming effects are crucial for understanding memory and cognitive function.
- Previous research has yielded mixed results regarding age-related changes in priming.
- A need exists for validated tasks to accurately measure priming in aging populations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the size of repetition priming effects across a wide age range of older adults (55-94 years).
- To examine the influence of explicit retrieval strategies on priming.
- To develop and validate a new Word-Stem Completion (WSC) task for enhanced measurement accuracy.
Main Methods:
- A newly developed Word-Stem Completion (WSC) task was administered to 170 cognitively healthy older adults.
- Factors known to complicate priming measurements were controlled for.
- Post-task questionnaires assessed awareness of the study-test relationship and explicit retrieval strategies.
Main Results:
- Priming effects were found to be age-invariant, with no significant influence from age, gender, education, intelligence, cognitive status, memory complaints, or depressive symptoms.
- Participants reporting awareness of the study-test relationship showed higher priming scores.
- Analysis of completion times indicated that explicit contamination during the task was unlikely.
Conclusions:
- Word-Stem Completion (WSC) priming is robust and age-invariant up to very old age.
- The developed WSC task demonstrates increased validity and may improve the specificity of cognitive assessments.
- This validated task holds potential for differentiating conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.
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