Effets de l'âge et du niveau d'étude sur différents sous-systèmes mnésiques

摘要

Summary : Effects of age and educational level on memory subsystems. A cross-sectional study of 60 healthy subjects ranging from 56 to 93 years old and divided into 2 educational levels indicated that both age and education influence explicit memory as measured by a set of tests : digit span, working memory, story recall, word recall, visual reproduction of geometrical figure and verbal fluency. However, neither age nor educational level significantly affected performance in 2 implicit word-stem completion tasks. For procedural memory, assessed by maze learning and mirror reading, the results were less clear-cut. Skill acquisition appears to be influenced by age (but not by educational level). This would be explained by an influence of explicit memory (greater for perceptuo-motor than for perceptuo-verbal skill), supported by multiple correspondence analyses and correlational analyses. On the other hand, statistical analyses suggest that skill retention is an implicit memory phenomenon, unaf- fected by age. These results are consistent with a multiple memory approach and strengthen the interest of modular concepts of memory in the study of normal aging. Key words : Memory, age, educational level.