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Memory score discrepancies by healthy middle-aged and older individuals: The contributions of age and education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2009

ALEXANDRA ECONOMOU
ALEXANDRA ECONOMOU*
Affiliation:
University of Athens, Department of Psychology, School of Philosophy, The University of Athens, Athens, Greece
*
*Correspondence and reprint requests: Alexandra Economou, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, School of Philosophy, The University of Athens, Panepistimiopolis, Ilissia 157 84, Athens, Greece. E-mail: aoikono@psych.uoa.gr
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Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine discrepancies between immediate/delayed recall and recall/working memory in middle-aged and older persons by age and education. Participants were 322 healthy individuals from the community who were stratified into three age and three education groups. Immediate and delayed recall distributions of WMS-III Logical Memory (LM) scores approximated normal curves, and LM savings scores showed a significant, but small, effect of age. LM (immediate, delayed) and Letter-Number Sequencing (LNS) discrepancies varied as a function of age and education. The difference between LM and LNS was not significant in the younger and less educated participants, but increased with age in the most educated group, and in the oldest group LNS exceeded LM (immediate and delayed). The results indicate deterioration in encoding and retrieval, rather than storage, with age, and show a differential, but small, effect of age and education on the memory measures. Working memory was resistant to age-related decline relative to immediate and delayed recall in the oldest, most educated group. Delayed recall–working memory discrepancy is relatively stable with age and education and may be a useful index of the onset of memory pathology across different ages and levels of education.(JINS, 2009, 15, 963–972.)

Keywords

Intraindividual variabilityAgingDemographicImmediate recallDelayed recallWorking memory
Type
Research Articles
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 15 , Issue 6 , November 2009 , pp. 963 - 972
Copyright
Copyright © The International Neuropsychological Society 2009

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