Journal article
Older adults catch up to younger adults on a learning and memory task that involves collaborative social interaction
Memory (Hove), Vol.23(4), pp.612-624
05/19/2015
DOI: 10.1080/09658211.2014.915974
PMCID: PMC4237685
PMID: 24841619
Abstract
Learning and memory abilities tend to decline as people age. The current study examines the question of whether a learning situation that emphasises collaborative social interaction might help older persons overcome age-related learning and memory changes and thus perform similarly to younger persons. Younger and Older participants (n = 34 in each group) completed the Barrier Task (BT), a game-like social interaction where partners work together to develop labels for a set of abstract tangrams. Participants were also administered standard clinical neuropsychological measures of memory, on which the Older group showed expected inferiority to the Younger group. On the BT, the Older group performed less well than the Younger group early on, but as the task progressed, the performance of the Older group caught up and became statistically indistinguishable from that of the Younger group. These results can be taken to suggest that a learning milieu characterised by collaborative social interaction can attenuate some of the typical memory disadvantages associated with being older.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Older adults catch up to younger adults on a learning and memory task that involves collaborative social interaction
- Creators
- B. J Derksen - Department of Neurology, Division of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Iowa Carver College of MedicineM. C Duff - Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, University of IowaK Weldon - Department of Neurology, Division of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Iowa Carver College of MedicineJ Zhang - Department of Biostatistics, University of Iowa College of Public HealthK. D Zamba - Department of Biostatistics, University of Iowa College of Public HealthD Tranel - Department of Neurology, Division of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Iowa Carver College of MedicineN. L Denburg - Department of Neurology, Division of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Memory (Hove), Vol.23(4), pp.612-624
- DOI
- 10.1080/09658211.2014.915974
- PMID
- 24841619
- PMCID
- PMC4237685
- NLM abbreviation
- Memory
- ISSN
- 0965-8211
- eISSN
- 1464-0686
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 05/19/2015
- Academic Unit
- Neurology; Radiology; Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute; Biostatistics
- Record Identifier
- 9983997300702771
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