Conjunctive and relational visual short-term memory binding in normal ageing

In long-term memory, there are age-related differences in relational binding, but not in conjunctive binding. Following the view that the same type of representation supports short- and long-term memory, we conducted a series of 4 experiments to assess whether the same dissociation is found between relational and conjunctive short-term memory binding. Groups of young and older adults (n = 30 in each group in Experiment 1, 32 in each group in Experiment 2, 20 in each group in Experiment 3, and 24 in each group in Experiment 4) studied shape-colour or object–colour pairs in a relational condition in which items were linked to colour patches and a conjunctive condition where colour was integrated into the items. Memory for bindings was tested with different tests across experiments: a reconstruction task, a single-probe recognition memory task or a multiple-probe recognition memory task. Additionally, in a few studies, we assessed the contribution of controlled and automatic memory processes to performance with the Process Dissociation Procedure. The results showed that in the single-probe recognition memory task, an age-related associative deficit was observed in the relational binding task, but not in the conjunctive binding task. However, in reconstruction and multiple-probe recognition tasks where the retrieval of both relational and conjunctive bindings relied primarily on controlled memory processes, age-related differences was found in the two conditions.