AGING OF COGNITIVE MECHANISMS

拟议的实验建立在一项研究计划的基础上，该计划旨在了解成人时期有效认知功能的潜力和限制。这项研究的具体目的是：1)从影响技能获得速度的因素来描述认知老化；2)描述特定技能学习形式(项目学习、规则学习、特征学习、情境学习和顺序学习)的相对效率的年龄差异。年轻人和老年人在对比学习形式(例如，简单项目学习和规则学习)的条件下的表现预计将提供一般理论以及技能获得的发展理论的测试。在这个项目的五年时间里，大约1000名年龄在20岁到70岁之间的女性和男性将接受8项实验的测试。实验1-4考察了在有利于项目学习或计算的条件下，练习对项目学习的影响、计算加速以及从计算到项目学习的转变的年龄相关差异。实验5-7旨在将不同的学习形式相互比较，以衡量每种学习形式对整体技能的贡献。来自实验5-7的数据将允许识别特定的学习年龄缺陷，并将利用这些缺陷来测试学习和自动化的一般理论。实验8考察了年龄对会话间干扰和保持效应的影响。拟议研究的结果有助于理解成人一生中获得和保持技能的有效条件。

The proposed experiments build on a program of research aimed at understanding the potentials and limits of effective cognitive functioning during the adult years. Specific aims of the proposed research are 1) to describe cognitive aging in terms of the factors that regulate the rate of skill acquisition, and 2) to describe age differences in the relative efficiency of selected forms of skill learning (item learning, rule learning, feature learning, context learning, and sequence learning). Performance of younger and older adults under conditions that contrast forms of learning (e.g., simple item learning with rule learning) is expected to provide tests of general theories as well as developmental theories of skill acquisition. During the five years of this project, about 1000 women and men between the ages of 20 and 70 years will be tested in eight experiments. Experiments 1-4 examine age-related differences in the effects of practice on item learning, computational speedup, and the shift from computation to item learning under conditions that favor either item learning or computation. Experiments 5-7 are designed to contrast different forms of learning with one other so as to weigh the contribution of each to overall skill. The data from Experiments 5-7 will allow specific age deficits in learning to be identified, and will exploit those deficits to test general theories of learning and automatization. Experiment 8 investigates inter-session disruption and retention effects by age. The outcomes of the proposed research contribute to the understanding of the effective conditions of skill acquisition and retention throughout the adult life span.