The impact of education in the primacy and recency effects in cognitively healthy aging

Abstract

The use of memory strategies can be influenced by multiple factors, some of which are still unknown. When a list of non-related words is presented for future free recall, a predictable serial position pattern appears with a better recall of words from the beginning (primacy) and from the end (recency) of the list. Primacy and recency effects have been mainly studied in cognitive impaired subjects as an attempt to understand impaired learning strategies among clinical samples. Nevertheless, this effect is very understudied in healthy groups despite its potential as a predictor of pathologic aging. In the present study we aimed to verify if the level of education influences learning strategies (serial position effect) in a wordlist test - the Auditory Wordlist Learning Test (from the Cognitive Function Dementia/Schuhfried battery). We included 294 healthy volunteers with ages ranging from 50 to 91, distributed along 4 different education groups: 1 to 6 years; 7 to 9 years; 10 to 12 years and >12 years. Overall, the two less educated groups presented differences from the most educated group across the four learning trials. Nevertheless, there were no differences in the learning rate. Considering serial position effects, in the first trial, the higher educated group had a clear advantage in the recall of primacy words in the first and fourth trial, as well as recency in the fourth trial. According to these results, education seems to play a role in initial learning, but has no effect in the rate of learning. Education also influenced serial position, especially primacy. Although serial position effects and learning patterns are well identified, they need further analysis in healthy groups and more consistent reproducibility in study results.

Date of Award	29 Sept 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Filipa Ribeiro (Supervisor)