Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 2, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-83).

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Alberta, 2009. / "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Counselling Psychology, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta." Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on August 31, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

This experiment investigated memory changes across the adult lifespan and some factors that might be associated with these changes. Adult participants of all ages (16 to 83 years old) were asked to orally describe scenic color photographs, and then following a delay, to re-describe these pictures from memory. Given information is objective, physical objects and their attributes that are depicted in a target picture, whereas beyond information is subjective, personal experiences and inferences that are not depicted in a target picture per se but are associated with a target picture. Chapter 3 examined the content of these picture descriptions for the amount of given and beyond information that was encoded and retrieved about target pictures. The results indicated an age-related decline in memory for given information and preserved memory for beyond information. Chapter 4 examined the relationship between perceptual and verbal ability and memory for given and beyond information. Perceptual ability was assessed by self-report measures of auditory and visual ability and verbal ability was measured by a standardized test. The results indicated that an age-related improvement in verbal ability, but not an age-related decline in perceptual ability, was related to memory for given and beyond information. Chapter 5 explored age-related changes in memory for feminine and masculine information across the adult female lifespan. Feminine and masculine information is information that would be considered exclusively relevant to young women and men, respectively. The results indicated an age-related increase in memory for feminine information and no age-related change in memory for masculine information. The divergent age-related changes in memory for given and beyond information and for feminine and masculine information were interpreted in terms of a developmental approach to schema theory and the lifespan psychology notions of selective optimization with compensation and loss in the service of growth. The present study suggests an integration between the domains of personality and cognitive psychology as one avenue for future research that could lead to a more complete understanding of memory and aging. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

This study investigated the influence of age and health status on verbal and visual memory and attention. The objective was to select subjects resembling participants in normative studies, and to contrast the genuinely healthy component with the "contaminants." A rigorous and detailed self-report of health status plus a standard neurological examination were used to screen and divide subjects into two health status groups: normal and super healthy. It was speculated that the strong effect of age on memory and attention commonly found among the elderly would be diminished with more restrictive control over health status.

No description available.

Several tasks examined implicit and explicit memory in matched samples of Alzheimer's (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, and healthy elderly subjects. Lexical priming, pursuit-rotor tracking, and a fragmented pictures test, followed by explicit memory tests, were given. AD patients were impaired on all explicit tests and on lexical priming, but were intact on pursuit-rotor tracking and the procedural learning (PL) component of the fragmented pictures test. PD patients were significantly better than AD patients on all explicit memory tests, but were selectively impaired on the PL component of the fragmented pictures test. Finally, a mirror reading test was given to the PD patients and matched control subjects, with no significant differences in performance between the two groups demonstrated. Results are discussed in terms of hypothetical cognitive processes and brain circuits underlying different explicit and implicit memory domains.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (February 20, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.

Semantic knowledge was investigated in patients diagnosed with Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type (DAT) by means of an off-line probe question battery and an on-line measurement of semantic priming in a lexical decision task (LDT) that varied the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). The patients' performance on the detailed probe questions showed that their semantic deficit was confined primarily to animate concepts, characterized by visual descriptive features. In the primed LDT, demented patients demonstrated increased semantic priming compared to age-matched controls. A trend was also found indicating that for both normal controls and DAT subjects the priming magnitude decreased as the SOA increased. These results are interpreted in terms of a distributed representation of semantic knowledge that is impaired in demented patients.

Thesis (PhD)-Open University. BLDSC no.DXN017034.

Elderly depressed patients are often referred for a neuropsychological examination to evaluate their cognitive abilities and to assist in making a differential diagnosis of dementia vs. depression when the etiology of presenting symptoms is unclear. Indices of discrimination (i.e., the ability to identify target from distractor items during recognition memory testing) and response bias (i.e., the probability of saying "yes" to an item when uncertain if it is a target or a distractor) have been suggested as useful aids when making such a differential diagnosis. Prior research indicated that discrimination abilities were significantly better in depressed elderly as compared to demented elderly and that depressed patients used the most conservative response strategy (i.e., they tended to say "no" more often when uncertain) while demented patients had a more liberal response style (i.e., they tended to say "yes" more often). However, little is known about the performance of patients with dementia complicated by depression. This study attempted to address the nature of discrimination ability and response bias in patients with dementia complicated by depression, as compared to demented patients without affective symptoms and depressed patients without cognitive impairment. Results indicated that demented and demented/depressed groups had poorer discrimination abilities than the depressed group. Discrimination abilities of the demented and the demented/depressed groups were similar. Pattern of responses, however, reflected a significantly more conservative response bias in the demented/depressed group as compared to the demented group. The demented/depressed group were also more conservative than the depressed group, but this comparison did not reach statistical significance. These results suggest that the combined effects of dementia and depression have a "conservatizing" effect on response bias in demented/depressed patients. This "conservatizing" effect may provide useful information when considering if an underlying depression exists in a demented patient. / Graduate