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33 The Impact of Context on Memory for Short Stories Among Older and Younger Adults
- Justin M. Palmer, Lesley A. Guareña, Lee Ryan
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- Journal:
- Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 29 / Issue s1 / November 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 December 2023, pp. 343-344
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Objective:
On traditional pattern separation tasks, older adults perform worse than younger adults when identifying similar objects but perform equally well when recognizing repeated objects. When objects are superimposed on semantically related scenes, older adults are influenced by the context to a greater degree than younger adults, leading to errors when identifying similar objects. However, in everyday life, people rarely need to differentiate between two perceptually similar objects. Therefore, we developed a task using short stories to represent similar events people may experience in daily life. Our goal was to investigate the influence of context, detail-type, and age on memory performance.
Participants and Methods:Twenty-one older and 18 younger adults listened to 20 short stories taking place in either a coffee shop or library, each paired with a unique picture (i.e., context). Participants were asked to imagine the story taking place within the picture. Approximately 20 minutes later, participants answered a yes/no question about a detail from a story superimposed on different contexts. The different context conditions were (1) the same picture from the original story, (2) a similar picture (i.e., a different library or coffee shop picture), (3) a dissimilar picture (i.e., a library picture instead of a coffee shop picture), or (4) a control using a Fourier-transform (FT) image without any spatial-context information. Questions either asked about an identical or similar detail from the story.
Results:Correct answers were analyzed using a 4x2x2 repeated measures ANOVA including context (same, similar, dissimilar, and FT), detail type (identical and similar), and age (younger and older adults). Overall, younger adults were more accurate than older adults, F(1,37)=23.4, p<0.001. However, surprisingly, the context and detail-type made no difference in accuracy, (F’s<1.1) A similar model was used to analyze reaction times. Younger adults were faster than older adults, F(1,37)=23.4, p<0.001. Participants of both ages were faster at correctly responding to the identical detail than the similar detail, F(1,114)=62.87, p<0.001. Context also impacted reaction time, F(3,114)=7.97, p<0.001. All participants were faster while viewing same and similar contexts compared to both the dissimilar and FT contexts (t(39)’s>2.20, p’s<0.05).
Conclusions:We did not find the kinds of age-related effects normally observed on traditional pattern separation tasks. Although younger adults performed better overall, older adults were not any worse when responding to a similar detail compared to an identical detail, which is inconsistent with performance on pattern separation tasks where older adults perform worse when identifying similar objects compared to younger adults. Additionally, older and younger adults were influenced by context in the same way. Previous studies from our laboratory demonstrated that older adults are biased toward the context when recognizing similar objects, but the context in this paradigm did not differentially influence accuracy for either older or younger adults. Potentially, this task relies on more semantic similarity rather than the perceptual similarity of objects. Semantic similarity from the short stories may incorporate more information to better orthogonalize similar memories, rendering retrieval less susceptible to interference.
Emotional health and its association with neurocognition in Hispanic and non-Hispanic White people with HIV
- Lesley A. Guareña, Lily Kamalyan, Caitlin Wei-Ming Watson, Kayle Karcher, Anya Umlauf, Erin Morgan, David Moore, Ronald Ellis, Igor Grant, Mariana Cherner, Raeanne C. Moore, Zvinka Z. Zlatar, Robert K. Heaton, María J. Marquine
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- Journal:
- Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 30 / Issue 1 / January 2024
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 20 April 2023, pp. 56-66
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Objective:
Emotional functioning is linked to HIV-associated neurocognitive impairment, yet research on this association among diverse people with HIV (PWH) is scant. We examined emotional health and its association with neurocognition in Hispanic and White PWH.
Methods:Participants included 107 Hispanic (41% primarily Spanish-speakers; 80% Mexican heritage/origin) and 216 White PWH (Overall age: M = 53.62, SD = 12.19; 86% male; 63% AIDS; 92% on antiretroviral therapy). Emotional health was assessed via the National Institute of Health Toolbox (NIHTB)-Emotion Battery, which yields T-scores for three factor-based summary scores (negative affect, social satisfaction, and psychological well-being) and 13 individual component scales. Neurocognition was measured via demographically adjusted fluid cognition T-scores from the NIHTB-cognition battery.
Results:27%–39% of the sample had problematic socioemotional summary scores. Hispanic PWH showed less loneliness, better social satisfaction, higher meaning and purpose, and better psychological well-being than Whites (ps <.05). Within Hispanics, Spanish-speakers showed better meaning and purpose, higher psychological well-being summary score, less anger hostility, but greater fear affect than English speakers. Only in Whites, worse negative affect (fear affect, perceived stress, and sadness) was associated with worse neurocognition (p <.05); and in both groups, worse social satisfaction (emotional support, friendship, and perceived rejection) was linked with worse neurocognition (p <.05).
Conclusion:Adverse emotional health is common among PWH, with subgroups of Hispanics showing relative strengths in some domains. Aspects of emotional health differentially relate to neurocogntition among PWH and cross-culturally. Understanding these varying associations is an important step towards the development of culturally relevant interventions that promote neurocognitive health among Hispanic PWH.
Influence of Educational Background, Childhood Socioeconomic Environment, and Language Use on Cognition among Spanish-Speaking Latinos Living Near the US–Mexico Border
- Lily Kamalyan, Lesley A. Guareña, Mirella Díaz-Santos, Paola Suarez, Mariana Cherner, Marlen Y. García Alcorn, Anya Umlauf, Donald R. Franklin, Monica Rivera Mindt, Lidia Artiola i Fortuny, Robert K. Heaton, María J. Marquine
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- Journal:
- Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 28 / Issue 8 / September 2022
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 06 September 2021, pp. 876-890
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Objectives:
We investigated the impact of culturally relevant social, educational, and language factors on cognitive test performance among Spanish speakers living near the US–Mexico border.
Methods:Participants included 254 healthy native Spanish speakers from the Neuropsychological Norms for the US–Mexico Border Region in Spanish (NP-NUMBRS) project (Age: M = 37.3, SD = 10.4; Education: M = 10.7, SD = 4.3; 59% Female). A comprehensive neuropsychological battery was administered in Spanish. Individual test scaled scores and T-scores (based on region-specific norms adjusted for age, education, and sex) were averaged to create Global Mean Scaled and T-scores. Measures of culturally relevant factors included a self-reported indicator of educational quality/access (proportion of education in Spanish-speaking country, quality of school/classroom setting, stopped attending school to work), childhood socioeconomic environment (parental education, proportion of time living in Spanish-speaking country, childhood socioeconomic and health status, access to basic resources, work as a child), and Spanish/English language use and fluency.
Results:Several culturally relevant variables were significantly associated with unadjusted Global Scaled Scores in univariable analyses. When using demographically adjusted T-scores, fewer culturally relevant characteristics were significant. In multivariable analyses, being bilingual (p = .04) and working as a child for one’s own benefit compared to not working as a child (p = .006) were significantly associated with higher Global Mean T-score, accounting for 9% of variance.
Conclusions:Demographically adjusted normative data provide a useful tool for the identification of brain dysfunction, as these account for much of the variance of sociocultural factors on cognitive test performance. Yet, certain culturally relevant variables still contributed to cognitive test performance above and beyond basic demographics, warranting further investigation.