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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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The extent of stability and change in episodic and semantic memory in old age
— demographic predictors of level and change | | Author(s) | Martin Lövdén, Michael Rönnlund, Ake Wahlin |
| Journal title | Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 59B, no 3, May 2004 |
| Pages | pp P130-P134 |
| Source | http://www.geron.org |
| Keywords | Memory and Reminiscence ; Performance ; Mental clarity ; Cross sectional surveys ; Sweden. |
| Annotation | Cross-sectional data suggests that memory for specific events (i.e. episodic memory) deteriorates gradually from age 20 onwards, whereas small age-related changes are observed in memory for facts (i.e. semantic memory) at least until very old age. This Swedish study examined structural stability and change in semantic and episodic memory, also inter-individual differences in 5-year changes, in a sample of 361 older people aged 60 to 80. Inter-individual differences in change were limited but significant. Stability coefficients were higher for semantic memory (.95) than for episodic memory (.87). Changes in episodic and semantic memory performance were strongly associated (r=.68). Across time, variances and covariances increased, and a tendency toward differentiation in terms of increasing correlations was found. Chronological age was related to both level and change, but gender and education were only related to level of memory performance. Collectively, these results depict relatively high degrees of structural stability and stability of inter-individual differences in declarative memory in old age. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-041103207 A |
| Classmark | DB: 5H: DF: 3KB: 76P |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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