Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 52, Issue 6 P308-P318, Copyright © 1997 by The Gerontological Society of America
Processing speed and memory in aging and dementia
M Sliwinski and H Buschke
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York 10461, USA. [email protected]
We examined the role of processing speed (PS) as a mediator of age- related
and dementia-related differences in cued recall and text memory. Consistent
with previous research, statistical control of PS significantly attenuated
or eliminated age differences on each of the memory measures. However,
age-related decline in the ability to benefit from conditions of increased
encoding specificity was not mediated by PS. In contrast to the results for
age effects, statistical control of PS did not significantly attenuate
dementia-related memory differences, suggesting that processing speed is
not an important dementia-related memory impairment. The implications of
these findings for interpreting residual age effects and the possible
influence of preclinical dementia on studies of normal aging are discussed.
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