BRAIN POTENTIALS (ERPS)--LANGUAGE, MEMORY, AND AGING

一个为期五年的研究计划，旨在澄清 正常老化、执行性（抑制）、转移 专注，巩固）和非执行（激活，存储，衰减） 工作记忆（WM）操作和语言理解。已经 沿着而来的是WM能力的降低， 不仅表现在更大的遗忘倾向上， 增加理解结构复杂句子的难度 （理解）从一个想法或行动迅速转换到另一个想法或行动 （注意力转换），忽略和/或抑制 不相关（抑制）。我们详细介绍了使用两者的一系列实验 性能和电生理措施，以测试这些建议。 事件相关脑电位（ERP）将从头皮记录， 年龄在20岁到90岁之间的正常人 语言和非语言材料。拟议的实验包括 WM的不同子成分的操作和/或长期 记忆的具体目标：（1）扩展我们的研究结果， 阅读对关系从句的年龄效应 （2）确定老年人是否真的有问题 语言理解能力，因为句子 加工对工作记忆巩固过程的影响;（3） 检验老年人与年轻人不同的假设， 照应指代词的解决是令人难以置信的程度， 因此需要抑制先前的期望;（4）检查 抑制过程变得更慢和/或效率降低的假设 随着年龄的增长， 句子和词汇判断任务;（5）检验假设 老年人更难忽视和抑制无关的 使用广义“2-back”工作记忆范式的刺激属性 （6）测试建议， 由于抑制机制效率较低，老年人将 在验证探针时显示出比年轻人更大的“风扇效应” 与他们所学到的一系列命题相关的项目。 这项研究项目将完善电生理标志物， 与语言处理有关的重要认知功能， 正常成年人工作记忆和长期记忆的组织 生活原则上，这些数据可以提供最佳的指导方针。 针对老年人的语言材料结构。而且这 规范性数据库应具有评估青年和 老年人的衰老和语言处理障碍。

A five-year research program is described which is aimed at clarifying the relationships among normal aging, executive (suppression, shifting of focus, consolidation) and non-executive (activation, storage, decay) working memory (WM) operations, and language comprehension. It has been suggested that along with age comes a reduced WM capacity which is manifest not only in a greater tendency to forget but also in an increased difficulty making sense of structurally complex sentences (comprehension), in switching from one idea or action to another quickly (attentional switching), and in ignoring and/or suppressing that which is irrelevant (inhibition). We detail a series of experiments using both performance and electrophysiological measures to test these proposals. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) will be recorded from the scalp of normal human subjects between the ages of 20 and 90 as they process linguistic and non-linguistic materials. The proposed experiments include manipulations of the different subcomponents of WM and/or long term memory with the specific aims of: (1) extending our findings on the effects of aging on sentences with embedded relative clauses from reading to speech; (2) determining whether the elderly do indeed have problems with language comprehension because of the demands that sentence processing makes on consolidation processes in working memory; (3) testing the hypothesis that the elderly will differ from the young in anaphoric reference to the extent that pronoun resolution is implausible, thereby requiring inhibition of a prior expectation; (4) examining the hypothesis that inhibitory processes become slower and/or less efficient with advancing age by investigating negative priming with homophones in sentences and during a lexical decision task; (5) testing the hypothesis that the elderly have a harder time ignoring and inhibiting irrelevant stimulus attributes using a generalized "2-back" working memory paradigm with non-language materials as well; (6) testing the proposal that because of less efficient inhibitory mechanisms, older individuals will show larger "fan effects" than younger individuals in verifying probe items related to a series of propositions that they have been taught. This research project will refine electrophysiological markers of important cognitive functions in relation to language processing and organization of working and long-term memory in normal adults throughout life. These data can, in principle, offer guidelines on the best structure for language materials aimed at the elderly. Moreover, this normative data base should be of value for the assessment of young and old individuals with disorders of aging and language processing.