Effects of perceptually-based noise and distortion on memory in older adults

在我们日益工业和拥挤的社会中，人们几乎总是在不想要的噪音中工作和生活。随着年龄的增长，这种噪音对信息处理的负面影响变得更加明显，部分原因是与年龄相关的听力和视力丧失。除了这些知觉上的困难外，老年人经常报告说在记忆信息方面也有困难。最近的研究发现，听觉和视觉等知觉过程与记忆和理解性对话等认知过程之间存在联系。这项提案中概述的研究旨在探索知觉和记忆过程之间的联系，以确定与年龄相关的认知差异中有多少可以追溯到知觉困难，有多少应该归因于其他原因。该方法将测量、控制和操纵编码工作，并确定其对内存性能的影响。为了实现这一点，将在刺激中添加不同数量的视觉和听觉噪声，并创建个人识别功能。内存性能将通过识别功能进行预测。由于感知和认知因素之间的复杂相互关系，将使用计算机模拟模型来进一步描述每个因素的贡献。收集的数据将有助于将研究议程集中在那些对克服变老带来的困难的战略至关重要的因素上。这些研究的长期目标是开发一种正式的、定量的记忆模型，使研究人员和从业者能够准确定位对高效认知处理至关重要的功能区域。在纽芬兰和拉布拉多，确定与年龄有关的认知衰退的原因将变得越来越重要，因为据加拿大统计局预测，到2031年，65岁以上人口的比例将几乎翻一番。

In our increasingly industrial and crowded society people are almost always working and living in the presence of unwanted noise. The negative impact of this noise on processing information becomes more noticeable as individuals grow older, in part as a result of age-related hearing and vision loss. In addition to these perceptual difficulties, older adults often report difficulty in remembering information. Recent research has identified a link between perceptual processes such as hearing and vision and cognitive processes, such as memory and understanding conversations. The studies outlined in this proposal are aimed at exploring the link between perceptual and memory processes in order to determine how much of the age-related cognitive differences can be traced to perceptual difficulties and how much should be attributed to other causes. The approach will be to measure, control, and manipulate encoding effort and determine its effect on memory performance. To accomplish this, various amounts of visual and auditory noise will be added to stimuli and individual identification functions will be created. Memory performance will be predicted from the identification functions. Because of the complex interrelation of perceptual and cognitive factors, computer simulation models will be used to further describe the contributions of each factor. The data collected will help focus the research agenda on those factors that are critical to strategies to overcome the difficulties posed by growing older. The long-term goal of these studies is to develop a formal, quantitative model of memory that will allow researchers and practitioners to pinpoint the areas of functioning that are critical to efficient cognitive processing. Determining the causes of age-related cognitive declines will become more and more important in Newfoundland and Labrador as the percentage of the population over the age of 65 is projected by Statistics Canada to almost double by the year 2031.