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The article presents a mathematical model of short-term recognition based on dual-process models and the three- component theory of working memory [Oberauer, K. (2002). Access to information in working memory: Exploring the focus of attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 28, 411-421]. Familiarity arises from activated representations in long-term memory, ignoring their relations; recollection retrieves bindings in the capacity- limited component of working memory. In three experiments participants encoded two short lists of nonwords for immediate recognition, one of which was then cued as irrelevant. Probes from the irrelevant list were rejected more slowly than new probes; this was also found with probes recombining letters of irrelevant nonwords, suggesting that familiarity arises from individual letters independent of their relations. When asked to accept probes whose letters were all in the relevant list, regardless of their conjunction, participants accepted probes preserving the original conjunctions faster than recombinations, showing that recollection accessed feature bindings automatically. The model fit the data best when familiarity depended only on matching letters, whereas recollection used binding information.
No age differences in complex memory search : older adults search as efficiently as younger adults
(2009)
In 2 experiments, the authors investigated age differences in memory search under 4 conditions: forward search, backward search, random search, and fixed irregular search. Both search slopes and serial position curves were investigated. Mixing conditions led to smaller age differences than blocking conditions, suggesting that younger adults have an advantage over older adults when strategies can be applied to memory scanning. All age differences in scanning rates, however, disappeared when age differences in a magnitude-judgment control task were controlled for, showing that age differences in memory scanning tasks are not because of the scanning process per se, but because of attention, sensorimotor speed, and decision processes. In both experiments, the serial position curves of older adults echoed those of younger adults closely, demonstrating that younger and older adults use the same scanning processes.