Andrew C. Coyne

Influence of adult age on primary and secondary memory search.

We compared young and elderly adults on the ability to search lists of words stored in primary memory (PM) and in secondary memory (SM). The results of Experiment 1 indicated that age differences in search performance were greatest under SM conditions. Older adults, unlike the young, appeared biased toward responding that probe items were not members of the memory sets stored in SM. As a result of this apparent bias, older adults committed a large number of errors on trials in which the probe was a member of the memorized list (i.e., positive probe trials) yet few errors on trials in which the probe was not a member of the list (i.e., negative probe trials). In addition, the responses of older, but not younger, adults to negative probe trials were found to be more rapid than were those to positive probe trials. In Experiment 2 we examined this pattern of responding and concluded that age differences were involved in the ability to encode memory sets and transfer them from PM to SM as well as in the ability to retrieve information from SM prior to conducting a memory search.

Effectiveness of Nursing Home Staff as Managers of Disruptive Behavior: Perceptions of Nursing Directors

Nursing directors of 899 geographically diverse skilled nursing facilities reported substantial limitations in the competence of staff at all levels in managing behaviorally disturbed patients and a broad-based need for improvements in skills. The authors propose an interdisciplinary team training model as an appropriate design for improving competence and promoting collaborative care.

Adult age, presentation time, and memory performance

The present investigation involved an examination of the influence of the task variable of presentation time on the free recall performance of young and elderly adults. The two age groups of participants were initially asked to predict the number of words (out of 16) they would be able to recall if given a particular presentation duration. These predictions were subsequently compared to actual recall performance of the two groups when lists were displayed for the durations employed during the prediction phase. Results indicated that young adults more accurately predicted their recall performance than did older adults. Both age groups, however, were found to vary their recall predictions in a similar fashion as a function of changes in hypothetical presentation time of the word lists. The findings of the present study, therefore, supported those of previous investigations which concluded that age differences in memory knowledge do not accurately reflect age differences in memory task performance. No support, however, was provided for the hypothesis that age differences exist with respect to knowledge about the relationship between the task variable of presentation time and memory performance. Thus, these findings suggest that different dimensions of memory knowledge may be differentially influenced by the aging process.

Age differences in primary organization or processing variability? Part I: An examination of age and primary organization

We compared young and elderly adults on the ability to serially recall sequences of letters assumed to be stored in secondary memory. The results showed that older adults recalled significantly fewer complete strings than younger adults. However, both age groups exhibited the same pattern of transitional error probabilities (TEPs), indicating that the two groups were chunking information in the same qualitative manner. Interestingly, though, the older adults exhibited higher TEP spikes (indicating stronger chunk bounderies) than did younger adults. These results do not support the view that there are qualitative age differences in primary organization, but the results do indicate that older adults have a secondary memory deficit.

Adult Age, Information Processing, and Partial Report Performance

Previous investigations using the partial report technique for examining adult age differences in iconic memory have suggested that older adults are less able to extract information stored in the icon than are young adults. The present study examined the hypothesis that poorer partial report performance on the part of older adults involves age-related differences in the speed of visual and auditory information processing. Elderly (M = 67 years) and young (M = 23.5 years) adults were contrasted on partial report, whole report, backward masking, and choice reaction time tasks. Results indicated that the older age group exhibited a smaller partial report advantage than did their younger counterparts. This age difference was found to be related in part to increases with age in the time required to encode and identify visual stimuli but was not related to the time required to translate auditory cues into recall instructions. In other words, the slowdown in visual information processing speed that accompanies increased age contributes to age differences in performance on tasks involving iconic memory.

A software-based millisecond timer for the CP/M operating system

One of the most popular operating systems for 8-bit microcomputers is Digital Researchs CP/M (see Waite & Lafore, 1983, for an extensivediscussion of CP/M). By requiring that programmers and programs make use of a standard set of BasicDiskOperating System(BOOS) calls to handle input, output, and other tasks, CP/M allows for a high degree of transportability across microcomputers based on Z-80, 8080, and 8085 microprocessors. This transportability represents a substantial advantage for university-based researchers who mayfmdthemselves dealingwitha varietyof microcomputers based on the above chips, yet all using slightly different input, output, and mass-storage schemes. The presentarticle detailsa simpleand short (39-byte) assembly language millisecond timing program that utilizes a call to CP/Ms BDOS to monitor a microcomputers keyboard for a subjects response. Dlhopolsky (1983) hasprovided onemeans of carryingout sucha timingtask withthe Z-80assembly language routine, MSEC LATENCY TIMER. However, this particular timer is designed for and will run only on a TRS-80 microcomputer, since it makes use of specific keyboard routines that are coded into the computers read only memory (ROM). The current routine, CPMTIMER, represents a versionof DlhopolskysMSECLATENCYTIMERthat has been modified to run under CP/M (which employs 8080 code). An additional modification has been made so that a subjects keyboard responses are monitored through the use of a CP/M BDOS call that is constant across all microcomputers running the CP/M operating system. As notedabove, this greatly increases the transportability of the program. Description. CPMTIMERwasdesigned to keep track of howmanymilliseconds (up to 65,535) elapsebetween the timethatthe routine is called or activated fromanother program and the time that a subject pushes a keyboard key. The routine also keeps trackof which key is pressed. CPMTIMER carries out these tasks by continually monitoring the keyboardfor a subjects input. If no key is pressed,a seriesof microprocessor instructions are executed which keep track of elapsed time and increment a counter when 1 msec passes. If a key is pressed, the

AGE DIFFERENCES IN ACOUSTIC AND SEMANTIC RECOGNITION MEMORY

Patterns of information encoding were examined across a wide age range of subjects. Subjects aged 8-, 10-, 24-, 66-, and 75-yr. were administered a recognition memory task involving both acoustically and semantically related distractor words. The errors and latencies indicated no age-difference in encoding patterns. A comparison of errors for 8-, 10-, and 24-yr.-olds alone, however, indicated a shift from acoustic to semantic encoding style between the ages of 8 and 10.