Adult Age Differences in Binding Actors and Actions

对事件的准确记忆需要将事件的不同组成部分关联或绑定在一起，例如涉及的人、他们执行的操作、所作用的对象以及事件发生的上下文。越来越多的证据表明，随着成年年龄的增长，在记忆中绑定信息的能力会减弱。这项拟议的研究旨在调查一种特定类型的绑定能力，即用人的行动约束人的能力，随着年龄的增长而下降。这种类型的绑定能力对记忆功能至关重要，无论是在日常环境中还是在较少的情况下 目击者证词的常见但特别重要的背景。然而，用行动约束人是一项艰巨的任务，这从一种被称为无意识移情的现象中可见一斑。在无意识转移中，目击者错误地将熟悉的人与另一个人的行为联系在一起。考虑到与年龄相关的绑定能力下降的证据，我们预测老年人应该特别容易受到无意识转移的影响。更好地了解老年人容易受到无意识转移的情况，对于知道何时应该自信地接受老年人的证词以及何时应该谨慎对待它至关重要。这项研究的具体目的是(1)开发一个无意识迁移的实验室模型，使我们能够测试人们将行为者与行为联系起来的能力；(2)比较年轻人和老年人的无意识迁移的速度；(3)考察熟悉、有意识的回忆、分心、暴露的频率、反应截止日期、时间连续性和照片曝光对年轻人和老年人无意识迁移可能性的影响。拟议的研究将使用一种方法来实现这些目标，即向18-30岁的年轻人和60-90岁的社区老年人提供一系列简短的视频剪辑，描述一些不同的演员表演一些不同的 行为。参与者稍后将接受关于这些视频片段的记忆力测试。关键的测试项目将涉及熟悉的演员执行由不同的演员在编码时执行的动作。对这些项目的错误认识可以被用作无意识转移的衡量标准，使人们能够检查年轻人和老年人易受这种现象影响的条件。

Accurate memory for an event requires one to associate, or bind together, the different components of the event, such as the people involved, the actions that they perform, the objects that are acted upon, and the context in which the event occurs. A growing body of evidence suggests that the ability to bind information in memory diminishes with increased age in adulthood. The proposed research is designed to investigate age-related declines in one particular type of binding ability, namely the ability to bind people with their actions. This type of binding ability is crucial for memory functioning both in everyday contexts and in the less common but especially important context of eyewitness testimony. Binding people with actions is a difficult task, however, as indicated by a phenomenon known as unconscious transference. In unconscious transference, an eyewitness mistakenly associates a familiar person with the actions of another person. Given the evidence for an age-related decline in binding ability, we predict that older adults should be particularly susceptible to unconscious transference. A better understanding of the conditions under which older adults are susceptible to unconscious transference is critical to knowing when older adult testimony should be accepted with confidence and when it should be regarded with caution. The specific aims of the proposed research are (1) to develop a laboratory model of unconscious transference that will allow us to test people's ability to associate actors with actions, (2) to compare the rate of unconscious transference in young and older adults, and (3) to examine the impact of familiarity, conscious recollection, distraction, frequency of exposure, response deadlines, temporal contiguity, and photograph exposure on the likelihood of unconscious transference in young and older adults. The proposed research would achieve these aims using a method that involves presenting young adults aged 18 - 30 and community-dwelling older adults aged 60-90 with a series of brief video clips depicting a number of different actors performing a number of different actions. Participants would later be tested on their memory for these video clips. The crucial test items would involve a familiar actor performing an action that had been performed by a different actor at encoding. The false recognition of these items can be used as a measure of unconscious transference, allowing one to examine the conditions under which young and older adults are susceptible to this phenomenon.