AGING OF COGNITIVE MECHANISMS

认知机制老化

• 批准号: 6743178
• 负责人: WILLIAM J. HOYER
• 金额: $ 26.43万
• 依托单位: SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 1993
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1993-04-15 至 2006-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6743178
• 关键词: age difference; aging; association learning; behavior test; behavioral /social science research tag; clinical research; cognition; computer program /software; discrimination learning; human subject; learning; mathematical ability; memory; neural information processing; neuropsychology; performance; stimulus /response; training; visual perception

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.

拟议的实验建立在一个旨在了解成年人有效认知功能的潜力和限制的研究项目上。本研究的具体目的是：1)根据调节技能习得率的因素描述认知老化；2)描述所选技能学习形式（项目学习、规则学习、特征学习、情境学习和顺序学习）相对效率的年龄差异。在对比学习形式（例如，简单项目学习与规则学习）的条件下，年轻人和老年人的表现预计将为一般理论以及技能习得的发展理论提供测试。在这个项目的五年里，大约1000名年龄在20到70岁之间的女性和男性将在八个实验中接受测试。实验1-4检验了在有利于项目学习或计算的条件下，练习对项目学习、计算加速和从计算到项目学习的转变的影响的年龄相关差异。实验5-7旨在对比不同形式的学习，以衡量每种形式对整体技能的贡献。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考察了不同年龄对会话间中断和保留率的影响。本研究的结果有助于理解成人一生中技能习得和保留的有效条件。