In everyday life memory is commonly used in the completion of future intentions, such as remembering to attend a meeting or remembering to make a purchase at a particular time or place. The ability to remember to complete future intentions plays an important role in older adults maintaining independent living within the community (Cherry & LeCompte, 1999). The studies presented in this thesis evolved out of the lack of current understanding about which component processes involved in remembering future intentions are most susceptible to the effects of aging. In order to investigate these processes, a computer-based analogue of a real-life task was developed (the Virtual Street) that enabled participants to complete a series of intentions (shopping errands) during a simulated visit to a shopping centre.
There were two main objectives of this thesis. The first objective was to examine whether the Virtual Street shopping task was appropriate for assessing older and younger adults ability to remember to complete delayed intentions and whether the task had better ecological and face validity than current assessment measures. The second objective was to identify the cognitive processes involved in the task that were vulnerable to the effects of aging, and whether the process of recognising the cues or the memory search of the intention content would be affected. In order to examine these cognitive processes, various factors were manipulated in ways designed to be analogous to real-world situations, which were hypothesized to be sensitive to the effects of aging. These factors include: a change in the location where an intention can be realised (Study 1), the opportunity to learn the intentions (Study 2), the familiarity of the shopping environment (Study 3), and the presence of distractions (Study 4).
Overall, the results from the four studies demonstrated that older adults have difficulty remembering delayed intentions, even when the test uses naturalistic stimuli, the tasks are familiar, and they are able to move at their own pace. Furthermore, the results from Study 2 demonstrated that the memory search component but not cue detection was affected in older persons when they were given fewer trials to learn the shopping errands, possibly due to the accessibility of the cue-intention associations may be impaired in older adults. There was no age specific effect on cue detection or memory search in either an unfamiliar street environment (Study 3) or one with increased levels of irrelevant auditory and visual noise (distraction condition, Study 4). In the interruption condition of Study 4, however, cue detection but not memory search was disproportionately affected in older adults after filled interruptions, suggesting that the capacity for self-initiated reinstatement of working memory is reduced in old age.
In general, the Virtual Street task was to be a practical means of examining younger and older adults ability to remember to complete delayed intentions. The Virtual Street task also provided an opportunity for behavioural observation of real-life skills and cognitive abilities, within a controlled context. It is hoped that the Virtual Street shopping task will continue to be developed into an ecologically valid measure of assessing older adults memory functioning.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/217497 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Farrimond, Samantha, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Otago. Department of Psychology |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://policy01.otago.ac.nz/policies/FMPro?-db=policies.fm&-format=viewpolicy.html&-lay=viewpolicy&-sortfield=Title&Type=Academic&-recid=33025&-find), Copyright Samantha Farrimond |
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