Theoretical analysis of the effects of aging on memory and reaction time

描述(申请人提供)：在先前资助的研究(美国国家老龄研究所，1999-2005)中，我们使用双选择决策理论来探索衰老对认知的影响。这些理论受到了广泛的表现水平和大量实验条件的相互竞争的要求的严重挑战，但它们成功地联合解释了年轻人和老年人的所有反应时间和准确性数据。这些理论允许分离两种选择决策中涉及的加工成分，并确定哪些成分受到年龄的影响。60-90岁的成年人从刺激中获得的信息质量通常不比大学生差，尽管老年人在加工的非决策部分通常速度较慢，而且他们采用了更保守的决策标准。在拟议的研究中，这些理论将应用于四个主要问题，所有这些都是NIA任务的核心：首先，我们计划调查是否可以通过实验室任务和/或基于计算机的培训包来提高老年人在简单的两项选择任务中的表现，这些理论确定的哪些加工成分可以通过培训来改进，以及在什么条件下加工过程的改进会从一个任务转移到另一个任务？其次，我们计划调查与正常健康成年人相比，早期阿尔茨海默病患者和轻度认知障碍患者的哪些加工组件受到影响。如果其中一种或另一种成分在三个人群中受到不同程度的影响，它可能会提供一个特征来帮助诊断。第三，我们计划研究老龄化对健康的年轻人和老年人的影响。我们完成的大部分工作都集中在受过大学教育的成年人身上。我们可能会发现，对于受教育程度较低和/或认知能力较低的成年人来说，衰老会导致更大程度的性能和加工成分的下降。第四，我们计划将我们的理论和实证研究扩展到需要联想记忆的任务中，联想记忆是一种经常随着年龄的增长而大幅下降的记忆。除了这四个主要问题外，我们还计划检查关于衰老、损伤、实践和任务要求的影响的结论在二选一决策理论中是否一致，并检查标准二选一反应时间范式的结论与反应信号范式的结论。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In previously funded research (National Institute of Aging, 1999-2005), we used theories of two-choice decision making to explore the effects of aging on cognition. The theories were severely challenged by wide ranges of performance levels and the competing demands of large numbers of experimental conditions, but they were successful in jointly accounting for all the response time and accuracy data for young and older adults. The theories allowed separation of the components of processing involved in two-choice decisions and determination of which components were affected by aging. The quality of the information obtained from stimuli was usually not worse for 60-90 year old adults than college students, although the older adults were generally slower in non-decision components of processing and they adopted more conservative decision criteria. In the proposed research, the theories will be applied to four main issues, all central to the mission of NIA: First, we plan to investigate whether performance on simple two-choice tasks can be improved for older adults by training on laboratory tasks and/or computer-based training packages, which components of processing identified by the theories can be improved with training, and under what conditions do improvements in processing transfer from one task to another? Second, we plan to investigate which components of processing are affected for patients with early Alzheimer's disease and patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment compared to normal healthy adults. If one or another of the components is differentially affected among the three populations, it might provide a signature to aid in diagnosis. Third, we plan to examine the effects of aging on a broad sample of healthy young and older adults. Most of our completed work has focused on adults with college educations. We may find that aging leads to larger decrements in performance and components of processing for adults with less education and/or lower cognitive abilities. Fourth, we plan to extend our theories and empirical investigations to tasks that require associative memory, a kind of memory that often shows large decrements with aging. In addition to these four main issues, we plan to check that conclusions about the effects of aging, impairment, practice, and task requirements are consistent across theories of two-choice decision making, and to check the conclusions from the standard two-choice response time paradigm against conclusions from the response signal paradigm.