Mechanisms supporting encoding of self-referential and emotional information with age

项目摘要 尽管年龄的增长会影响有效编码信息的能力， 仍然能够记住情绪唤起信息和自我参考 比其他类型的信息更好。迄今为止，这些文献 相对独立地进行，很少讨论是否有 支持与以下内容相关的内存增强功能的重叠机制 情绪唤起和自我参照处理。事实上，许多研究表明， 提出的唤醒特异性机制或自我特异性机制， 增强记忆力这项拟议中的研究将两种认知老化 具有自我参照处理专长的研究人员（安吉拉·古特切斯）， 情绪处理（伊丽莎白肯辛格）和定量心理学家与 结构方程建模和多层次建模的专业知识（Ehri Ryu）。的 拟议的研究使用行为，事件相关电位和功能磁 共振成像方法来测试两个主要假设。首先，有一个共享的 一套认知和神经机制，用于编码自我指涉 信息和情感信息（目标1）。第二，老化将保护 这些机制的招募，同时扰乱了许多参与的进程， 在中性和非自我参照信息的编码过程中（目标2）。通过使 将两个认知老化研究领域结合起来， 独立地，拟议的研究可能会为社会情绪提供新的线索， 处理和记忆系统。此外，通过关注 随着年龄的增长，记忆功能相对保留的区域，拟议的研究具有 阐明可最大限度利用的机制类型的潜力 提高成年人的记忆力。

Project Summary Although advancing age affects the ability to encode information effectively, older adults remain able to remember emotionally arousing information and self-referential information better than other types of information. To date, these literatures have proceeded relatively independently, with little discussion of whether there are overlapping mechanisms that support the memory enhancements associated with emotional arousal and with self-referential processing. In fact, much research has proposed arousal-specific mechanisms or self-specific mechanisms that may support enhanced memory. The proposed research brings together two cognitive aging researchers with expertise in self-referential processing (Angela Gutchess) and emotional processing (Elizabeth Kensinger) and a quantitative psychologist with expertise in structural equation modeling and multi-level modeling (Ehri Ryu). The proposed research uses behavioral, event-related potential, and functional magnetic resonance imaging methods to test two main hypotheses. First, that there is a shared set of cognitive and neural mechanisms engaged for the encoding of self-referential information and emotional information (Aim 1). Second, that aging will preserve the recruitment of these mechanisms while disrupting many of the processes engaged during the encoding of neutral and non-self-referential information (Aim 2). By bringing together two domains of cognitive aging research that have traditionally proceeded independently, the proposed research is likely to shed new light on socioemotional processing and memory systems across the adult lifespan. Moreover, by focusing on areas of relatively preserved memory function with aging, the proposed research has the potential to elucidate the types of mechanisms that can be harnessed to maximally improve memory performance across the adult lifespan.