Age and Gender Differences in Gist Memories
Date Issued
2008
Date
2008
Author(s)
Huang, Chiou-Yan
Abstract
Good memory entails adequate use of verbatim and gist memories. However, overreliance on gist memories will result in “false memories.”. Since normal aging leads to obvious structural and functional changes of the frontal lobes, which are involved in verbatim and false memories. Therefore, it is thus expected that elderly adult will tend to depend less upon verbatim memory and more on gist memory, with a consequent manifestation of more false memories than in young adults. Methodological problems, including incompatible participants’ educational levels or verbal abilities and small sample size, might contribute inconsistent findings. Besides, because of gender differences in brain volumes of the frontal and temporal lobes that are highly associated with episodic memories, monitoring abilities, and working memory, the issue of whether there exists gender differences in gist memory deserves investigation. The objectives of this study were as follows: （1） to explore issues of whether there were age and gender differences in gist memory measured by the DRM （Deese-Roediger-McDermott） tasks, （2） to examine the relationship between participants’ performances on the DRM tasks and the frontal and temporal lobe neuropsychological functioning, （3） to contrast the adequacy between the DRM paradigm task and Logical Memory subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale-III to measure gist memory. Ninety-six healthy adults with age range from 18-85 years old, and they were divided into six age groups. Each subject received the DRM tasks and a battery of neuropsychological tests measuring frontal and temporal lobe functionings. The results revealed that no age and gender differences were observed on the verbal DRM task. However, significant age and gender differences were revealed on the picture DRM task in which participants with age range 75-85 years old evidenced more gist memories than those participants with age younger than 55 years old, and male participants evidenced more gist memory than female participants. Participants’ performances on the DRM tasks were significantly correlated with those on the frontal-and temporal-related neuropsychological tests. In addition, gist memories and verbatim memories could be differentiated adequately measured by the DRM tasks than by the Logical Memory subtest. Since the small sample of each age group, further study on large scale is merited.
Subjects
aging
gist memory
gender differences
frontal lobe
temporal lobe.
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