The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Mental imagery and aging

Mental imagery and aging
Mental imagery and aging
Young adult (aged 18-23 yrs) and elderly (aged 55-71 yrs) Ss performed 4 visual mental imagery tasks, each of which tapped different processes. The elderly had relatively impaired image rotation and image activation (the process of accessing and activating stored visual memories), and there was a hint that aging may impair the ability to maintain images. In contrast, the elderly were able to compose (the process of generating the segments of the shape, one by one) and scan visual mental images as well as young adults. However, when the authors correlated the mean performance of each age group across all the tasks, they found that the reaction times (RTs) of the elderly were almost perfectly predicted by the performance of the young Ss but that the error rates were not correlated. These findings suggest that although there is slowing with age, individual imagery processes are affected selectively by aging.
0882-7974
90-102
Dror, Itiel E.
4d907da2-0a2e-41ed-b927-770a70a35c71
Kosslyn, Stephen M.
eebd0b70-3076-4e63-8dcc-6578f4222452
Dror, Itiel E.
4d907da2-0a2e-41ed-b927-770a70a35c71
Kosslyn, Stephen M.
eebd0b70-3076-4e63-8dcc-6578f4222452

Dror, Itiel E. and Kosslyn, Stephen M. (1994) Mental imagery and aging. Psychology and Aging, 9 (1), 90-102.

Record type: Article

Abstract

Young adult (aged 18-23 yrs) and elderly (aged 55-71 yrs) Ss performed 4 visual mental imagery tasks, each of which tapped different processes. The elderly had relatively impaired image rotation and image activation (the process of accessing and activating stored visual memories), and there was a hint that aging may impair the ability to maintain images. In contrast, the elderly were able to compose (the process of generating the segments of the shape, one by one) and scan visual mental images as well as young adults. However, when the authors correlated the mean performance of each age group across all the tasks, they found that the reaction times (RTs) of the elderly were almost perfectly predicted by the performance of the young Ss but that the error rates were not correlated. These findings suggest that although there is slowing with age, individual imagery processes are affected selectively by aging.

This record has no associated files available for download.

More information

Published date: 1994

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 18342
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/18342
ISSN: 0882-7974
PURE UUID: 20e84504-ce58-4a67-80bc-bf7579acbb13

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 10 Jan 2006
Last modified: 11 Dec 2021 14:18

Export record

Contributors

Author: Itiel E. Dror
Author: Stephen M. Kosslyn

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×