WORKING-MEMORY AND THE SELF-ORDERED POINTING TASK - FURTHER EVIDENCE OF EARLY PREFRONTAL DECLINE IN NORMAL AGING

Two major lines of investigation are currently clarifying the nature o f the impairment of working memory associated with normal aging. Cogni tive psychology has formulated the problem in terms such as the balanc e of impairment of encoding, retrieval, storage and/or attention, wher eas neuropsychology has formulated the problem in terms such as the ba lance of frontal (executive) versus temporal (mnemonic) degeneration. The findings of this study support the contention that the primary imp airment of working memory in early normal aging is an active attention al executive processing deficit. Specifically, on the Self-Ordered Poi nting Task, there is significantly ineffective exploitation of top-dow n clustering strategy as a function of aging. On this task, self-organ ization of encoding and retrieval must occur simultaneously with ongoi ng responding. The finding cannot be explained as an impairment of enc oding, retrieval, storage, or build-up and/or release of proactive int erference, since indexes of these did not discriminate young-adult fro m middle-aged samples.